The Italian press has confidently reported that Lando Norris, one of the greatest talents of the current generation in Formula 1, is Ferrari’s chosen one in the event that there is no agreement to extend the Scuderia’s contract with Carlos Sainz. The Italians are offering the Spaniard a one-year contract until 2025; he wants at least two years.

At the same time, Red Bull themselves – through director Christian Horner and advisor Helmut Marko – have expressed their interest in Norris, so the Englishman can be counted as one of many candidates to succeed Sergio Perez. Of course, Norris is under contract with McLaren until the end of 2025.

However, if McLaren’s impressive racing transformation this year continues into 2024, and particularly if the Woking-based team manages to claim equivalent victories against Red Bull and the sport’s other top teams, then it might seem absurd for Norris to leave.

If he does, on the one hand he will leave the role of leader in a team in which he plays the main role, and on the other hand he will find himself in the shadow of either Charles Leclerc or Max Verstappen in his – possibly always – new team. They are now clearly the core of Ferrari and RBR, the driver leaders on which the entire team is built.

Norris, who hasn’t won a Formula 1 GP in 104 starts despite coming close to the source several times, is undoubtedly aware of it all – and now says McLaren’s transformation from underdog to F1 star gives him faith that he can achieve his first victory in the premier class of motorsport.

However, there are other parameters for its future. McLaren unveiled its state-of-the-art wind tunnel and new simulator just last summer and also brought in top executives from Red Bull (Rob Marshall) and Ferrari (David Sanchez) to its engineering department.

Although McLaren boss Zach Brown has said the team’s goal is to win in Formula 1 from 2025, Norris, when asked by English Sky Sports F1, said he could take his first win from 2024: “One hundred percent, because it will happen next year and I will be with her.” McLaren Next year. I feel like we’re so close.”said the Englishman.

Speaking about his team, he continued: “We already have a lot of new things and we also have a lot of new ones.” [συνεργάτες] who will also start with us and come from other teams. Right now we’re in our strongest position in maybe ten years, and I feel like we’ll have even more to look forward to next year.

We finally got the wind tunnel up and running and it’s busier than ever. If there has been a time in the last five years when I have been more optimistic, it is now, as we approach 2024. We just have to start the year right. This year we had a terrible start, and yet we finished the year in a very, very strong position. So if we start the year off well, even just a little bit, I think it could be a great year.”Norris concluded.

Norris’ lack of victory in Formula 1 is a historic failure given his talent. He has been on the podium 13 times, including six times in 2023 and seven times on the second stage. But the last time in his career he climbed to the top in the first race of the 2018 Formula 2 Championship.

The elimination of errors

In between his impressive performances, Norris also made some serious mistakes – for which he was always particularly hard on himself. The latter was a spectacular oversteer slip in qualifying in Abu Dhabi that – possibly – cost him pole position.

McLaren wants to help Lando with this problem, the potential loss of confidence that a driving error can bring. The team has come up with something called “endurance” in tennis, or encouraging the Englishman to strive for consistent results rather than absolute perfection at the limit.

“It’s about how you judge situations, how you talk about them, and how you hypnotize yourself. This definitely deserves some attention.” said McLaren director Andrea Stella. “How can we sometimes accept that a 99.9% round is good enough? What are we dealing with? Always be at 100% or have stability?

When you look at the possibilities with the riders and the athletes at this level, you do it as a team. This happens in a spherical shape around the driver. If you look at tennis, the players there have the “entourage”.‘ around them, which is all about supporting them to fully realize their amazing performance.”added the Italian McLaren commander.

And speaking specifically about Norris, he added: “We need to pay attention to how he judges his own performance because he seems to be very hard on himself.” Sometimes we need to focus on the positive. There are many positive aspects and we need to make sure we recognize them and that we deal with the negative aspects efficiently and not out of self-punishment.”.

When asked if Oscar Piastri’s impressive first season in the neighboring McLaren garage had also played a role in Norris’ mistakes, Stella finally replied: “A competitive one teammate You can see how you can progress faster in certain places. […] And we certainly know that when the teammate You are strong, mistakes outweigh more. So we have to think about that.”