Lando Norris enjoyed a stellar 2023 campaign with McLaren, who are now setting their sights on reigning world champions Red Bull
Andrea Stella has claimed that Lando Norris ‘stands together’ with the other world champions that he has worked with, which includes the likes of Michael Schumacher, Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso. The McLaren star enjoyed one of the best seasons of his career in 2023 and is now rated among the finest talents in F1.
The 24-year-old scored seven podiums in the final 13 rounds of the 2023 season with six of those trips to the rostrum coming off the back of P2 finishes. Norris was regularly the closest threat to champion Max Verstappen, putting the Dutchman under pressure in both qualifying and the races when others seemingly couldn’t.
These performances naturally attracted interest from top teams, but Norris demonstrated his commitment to McLaren when he put pen to paper on a surprise new contract that will keep him with the Woking-based team into the new regulation period in 2026.
Asked how Norris compares to the other world champions that he has worked with, Stella told Motorsport.com: “Lando definitely stands together with them. It is the same category, the same kind of world championship material, the underlying talent, the mindset, the work ethos. It’s all ready to go.
But at the same time, when you think about champions, there is a characteristic of champions in that they only get better. Real champions, they seem to just improve year by year.
And I think that’s the case because they use the intelligence, the ethos, and they get the best people around them. They do whatever it takes to get better and better because the sport gets only more and more competitive
Touching on Norris’ progression since making his F1 debut with McLaren, Stella continued: “Definitely we have all the raw material, which we saw already when Lando was doing the free practice one [sessions] with us.
It was very evident in 2018. And then it kept growing. It’s there, we just need to keep growing year after year like every champion does. But we are extremely happy and committed to Lando, in this respect.”
With the team on an upward trajectory and both Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri tied down to long-term contracts, there is a feel-good atmosphere in the McLaren camp heading into the 2024 campaign. The papaya team have all of the ingredients to launch a challenge to reigning champions Red Bull over the coming seasons.
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