Norris has been through the mill – but this was a statement win

Lando Norris said his dominant victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix has given him more confidence to defend his first world title this year.

After the Australian won the fifth race of the season at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, the Briton’s victory in the lights-to-flag victory in April, the Briton took the championship lead for the first time since losing it to McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri.

More than that, though, it was confirmation of a strong run of form by Norris. Since leaving the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August with a fuel-line failure, he has reclaimed 35 points on Piastri in the five races.

Norris remarked, “It gives me confidence.” “One race performing well I don’t think means anything. I believe I’ve been good the last few months because I did two, three, or four in a row.

With only four races left until the season’s climax, McLaren has been the team of the year, not Red Bull.

The talk coming into the weekend was all about the threat Max Verstappen posed after three victories and a second place in the past four races had seen the Dutchman cut Piastri’s lead by 64 points.

Verstappen would win his fifth consecutive world title at the end of the season if he maintained that stature without the aid of a math genius.

The 25-year-old was in total control of the weekend from the minute he hit the track for the start of second practice, having handed his car to Mexican Indycar driver Pato O’Ward for the first session on Friday as one of the team’s mandatory rookie sessions.

One of the standout laps of the season saw him win pole. On the long run to the corner, he stayed away from the mayhem that was happening behind him and brushed off the threat of the slipstream from those behind.

The only time he lost the lead was as a result of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc cutting the third corner in the midst of his battle with team-mate Lewis Hamilton just behind Norris.

Norris vanished into the distance after Leclerc made amends by allowing the McLaren to pass him illegally on the way to Turn Four.

This year, Norris has been flawless. He started his campaign with a win in Australia, but Piastri then took control of the season and had won four races before Norris took a second.

Norris was unable to continue driving because it was not letting him feel his need to be quick. However, he has slowly started working his way back into it since a change to the front suspension for the Canadian Grand Prix in June.

His win this weekend was his fourth since then. Only two have been taken by Piastri in that time, the last of which came after Norris left Zandvoort.

That appeared to be a blow to Norris’ hopes at the time. Piastri had been so convincing, so solid, that making up that sort of margin looked impossible.

Norris remarked, “You put that behind you, right? ” You simply concentrate on each race that comes up as much as you can.

” Every weekend’s new and you have a fresh start to try new things and try to do better than before. And I think I did it very well this weekend.

Piastri started to lose steam as Norris returned to form shortly after Zandvoort. Norris was quicker in Italy. In Baku, Pirasti crashed three times and jumped off the rails.

At first, there was a little controverse, as Norris slipped into third place in Singapore. But Piastri has been simply slow over the past two races in the US and Mexico.

“The last few have been decent,” Norris said. But there is still a long way to go, so I just need to keep doing what I’m doing and fight off some quick opponents. And, yeah, I think that’ll be good.

After the race in Mexico, Norris acknowledged that he once “certainly did” doubt himself at some points earlier this year.

“When the car was winning and Oscar was winning”, he said, “the last thing I could do was use the excuse that my car wasn’t good enough.

It’s as simple as that; I wasn’t getting to grips with it and finding a way to make it work. I’m finding a better way to make it work now.

After two challenging weekends where he has been a little off the pace, Piastri is now facing that feeling.

” For some reason, the last couple of weekends has required a very different way of driving, “said Piastri.

I’ve needed something completely different the past few weekends compared to what I’ve had working well in the last 19 races. trying to explain why it has been a little difficult.

After qualifying 0.588 seconds and seven places behind Norris in Mexico, Piastri spent Saturday night deep in the data with his engineers, trying to come up with some answers.

Given that he spent the majority of his time stuck behind other cars on his way to fifth place, which would have felt painful, it was about trying to apply them, even if he was unable to provide a conclusive answer as to whether they had worked. In reality, it amounted to a successful recovery and exercise in damage limitation.

In the end, today’s discussion was about trying some of those things, “continued Piastri.” Because driving the way I’ve had to drive these last couple of weekends is not particularly natural for me.

Andrea Stella, the team’s manager, explained Piastri’s struggles.

He noted that Piastri still has lessons to learn about adapting to different circumstances, noting that Norris excels in low-grip conditions, whereas Piastri’s driving style tends to be high-grip levels.

“In the final four races, no reason to think that one may favour one driver or the other”, said Stella, pointing to Las Vegas as the most problematic potentially for the team.

There are no issues with the track layout for Lando and Oscar in the upcoming four races. From a McLaren perspective, we need to make sure that we are in condition to extract the full potential of the car, as we have done here in Mexico.

Verstappen was feeling much more composed after a difficult start, but he rallied to finish third behind Norris and Leclerc, despite being so upbeat after winning in Austin.

Verstappen’s deficit to the championship leader has reduced – from 40 points to 36. But it was obvious that he had enjoyed Norris’ pace.

If you look at it that way, I lost 10 points to Lando, Verstappen said. I said before the weekend, everything needs to go perfect to win. And it wasn’t a perfect weekend. So your response is that.

“It’s going to be tough, but let’s see what we can do in other tracks. I’m sure there won’t be another weekend like this, but it still shows how slow we are in every situation. And that’s what we need to get a little more understanding of.

Norris, though, sees it another way.

“Max has caught me over what, really? ” – six weekends for sure.