“They were never that far off”

Lando Norris says Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s recent resurgence is anything but surprising, and believes McLaren has made much bigger steps of its own over the past few years. 

After the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort, Verstappen trailed the championship lead by 104 points, but with five rounds remaining that deficit has shrunk to 40. The turnaround comes as Red Bull continued the development of its 2025 car longer than McLaren, and understands how to extract more from the RB21 as well. Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko confirmed an interesting theory about ride height, which has been linked to the Monza floor and an improved understanding of the car’s behaviour. 

A combination of these factors helped Red Bull make major progress – a surprise to many in the paddock, but not to Norris. Speaking ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix, the McLaren driver said he is not at all shocked that Verstappen and Red Bull have become title contenders again. 

“No, because they’ve won the last four [two] constructors’ championships before us,” Norris said when asked by Autosport. “They have some pretty smart people in the team who have won multiple world championships, and they were never that bad. They were never that far off.” 

According to Norris, Red Bull has been stronger all season than its public messaging suggested. “Max has had many pole positions through the whole year, so it’s not like they were ever bad.” 

He emphasised McLaren made bigger gains to get into the position the team is in now than Red Bull: “I think when you understand where we’ve come from a couple of years ago, we made much bigger steps than what they did to win the championships. I think when you know what’s possible internally from my team McLaren and how once you start to figure things out and understand what kind of differences you can make, it’s the same with them.” 

“They have an incredible team that has won many world championships, and an incredible driver. When you put these things together, it cannot be a surprise, especially when you live in the world that it’s in. I think when you know everything that goes on and when you understand how the aerodynamics work with the car and all these things, it’s quite the opposite of a surprise.” 

Norris closing in on Piastri 

While Verstappen’s comeback dominates the headlines, Norris has also been clawing back ground on team-mate Oscar Piastri since his costly engine failure in Zandvoort. That progress has boosted his belief in the title fight – even if he admits the task remains challenging. 

“I certainly believe that I can [become world champion], and do have a much better chance this year than last year, 100%,” Norris said.  

“As a driver, I have more confidence in what I did than last season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I have a much better chance. I’m up against a driver who’s improved massively from his second season to his third, and I’m against a four-time world champion. It’s different [from last year], but at the same time I’m against the best drivers in the world, so I don’t expect anything but tough battles.” 

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images

Were Piastri’s Austin problems circuit-specific? 

While Norris has been making up ground, Piastri has endured a rough patch recently. The Australian made multiple mistakes in Baku and struggled for outright pace in Austin. On Sunday night in Texas, he admitted that he didn’t have clear answers yet, although he now believes those struggles were specific to Circuit of the Americas. 

“I think it’s very COTA specific. It was just a messy weekend with everything that went on, so there’s an element of that hampering things,” Piastri replied when asked by Autosport. “But I think the analysis we’ve done has highlighted that there were a lot of things specific to Austin. I’m not really concerned that those problems will still persist. Obviously, I’m hoping that this weekend is a bit better.” 

After the race in Austin, team principal Andrea Stella said McLaren would inspect Piastri’s car to rule out potential chassis issues after the early crash in the sprint. 

“No, I haven’t asked them to change anything,” Piastri clarified. “I think there were some things that were maybe not as good as they could have been, but nothing drastically wrong with the car. 

“I think there were a few things in terms of how the weekend played out and how the race panned out that were different to our expectations from a few different angles. But, yeah, while the car maybe wasn’t ideal, if we could do the weekend again, we’d probably do a few things a little bit differently – but we wouldn’t be changing anything major.” 

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