MIAMI (Reuters) -Lando Norris said he had no worries about McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri building momentum in the Formula One title battle but recognised on Thursday he needed to get his act together and speed up.
Australian Piastri has won three of the last four races and is chasing a third in a row in Miami on Sunday after victories in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
The unruffled and consistent 24-year-old is now 10 points clear of Norris, the early pacesetter, at the top of the standings after five races and taking the lead at the previous race in Jeddah.
“No worry at all. He’s doing a good job and he deserves it. Nothing more than that,” Norris said when asked if he was worried about his teammate’s championship momentum starting to gather pace.
“I don’t believe so much in the momentum stuff.
“No reason to be worried. It’s round six of 24. I’m not going to say that forever, I know I need to get a move on and I need to get into gear a little bit. I’m doing the best I can every week and every minute.”
Norris accepted he had made mistakes after winning the season-opener in Australia but said the race pace was there and he was confident he would improve.
The Briton won in Miami last year, his first F1 victory, and he said the plan was to try and do it again.
“We feel good, we feel confident we’re the best, but the others are certainly not far behind and are constantly putting pressure on us,” he added.
“So one little mistake and we’re behind and we’re not where we want to be. Otherwise, it’s just another weekend.”
Norris has said the 2025 McLaren is different to last year’s and was maybe more to Piastri’s liking, or the Australian had done a better job at adapting.
He said it would take time to resolve the issues and he just had to keep his head down.
“It was nice to get away from things and have a bit of a reset,” he said of the break after Jeddah. “But it was productive.
“That doesn’t mean a lot of stuff has changed for this weekend. It’s not like things are going to magically work as I would love,” he added.
“But I think there’s been a lot more understanding over the last couple of weeks of certain things, certain feelings, what could have affected things, what maybe didn’t.”
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by…)
Comments