Lando Norris says he remains committed to his aspirations even though Max Verstappen re-emerges as a strong contender for the drivers’ championship at the US Grand Prix.
Verstappen has won three times and finished second once in the past four races, reducing his 104-point gap with Oscar Piastri to just 40 points over the period. Norris, who is currently only 26 points ahead of him with 88 points, said he approaches the fight the same even though he finished second at COTA and came within 14 points of Piastri.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Norris said. “I’m currently scoring as many points as I can every weekend, so the more points I get, the better it is for both situations. It doesn’t matter. Nothing changes. I don’t have to do anything different for either. It’s very simple. Just try to win for both drivers, and life is easy.”
“I don’t think it will change that much (in the standings). We are close to Red Bull. One weekend they are a little faster, the next weekend we are a little faster. Mercedes were the fastest in Singapore, so we will be able to do a lot here.”
Norris showed comparable pace to Verstappen throughout most of the race at the Circuit of the Americas, but lost to Ferrari at the start and ended up behind Charles Leclerc.
“[Leclerc]had a soft start, started on the right side of the grid and had an advantage on the outside in Turn 1…” he lamented. “After yesterday I was a little wary. I didn’t want to go too wide in Turn 1 because I didn’t want to fall into the gravel again, so I had to stay on the inside and stick to the safer route. Charles did a good job and I got passed.”
“After that, you never know. I think it was hard enough just to get close to Charles, and their pace wasn’t bad at all. You know, he was about six seconds off Max with 10 laps to go, so it wasn’t like we were that far off or their pace was that bad.”
“I think it was a good race. The paces were pretty close. I think that’s why it was so difficult because we were definitely faster, but not by much. It was a little challenging in the laps after the lap battles, trying to put pressure on him and trying to make mistakes here and there.”
“Obviously, he didn’t have much success. Especially in the last stint, I was able to get the tires in a good window and I was able to pull back a few seconds and attack again and catch him off guard a few laps in.”
“In the end it was a good result. For a moment I didn’t expect to finish second. I thought he was a little too fast for us, but it was perfect to get back to second and pass him.”