'Not As Many As You Think': Norris On Misconceptions About Lost Opportunities In 2024
F1
Lando Norris explained he didn't really have the opportunity to win as many races this season as people tend to think.
Although McLaren is widely considered to be the fastest / most consistently performing car since the 2024 Miami Grand Prix (for the last nine race weekends), Lando Norris went into the summer break with only one victory.
While he has only one win, the 24-year-old amassed five 2nd-place finishes and two 3rd-place finishes, and it seems he could definitely have had many more wins. But how many exactly?
The McLaren driver himself answered this question in a recent interview with RacingNews365. He asserted the number wouldn't be as high as people might think.
"Probably not as many as you would think, but definitely certain ones. Probably Hungary, Canada, and Silverstone."
"In Canada, I had a chance to win, but people don't understand how fast Mercedes was that weekend. They should have taken the easiest one-two of the whole year, but they didn't. We missed the chance to fight for the win, instead of saying we lost the win."
Mercedes's drivers made some crucial mistakes in Canada. Lewis Hamilton started the race from too far behind to contend for a race win to begin with, and George Russell made too many tiny but very costly errors in the race.
Norris was in P1 with a decent lead over Max Verstappen in P2 but lost it all when he didn't pit right when the safety car was deployed. The 24-year-old asserted Mercedes was faster in Silverstone as well.
"[At Silverstone] too, I lost the chance to fight for victory because I was much slower than Lewis Hamilton. As I said then, even if I had come on track [after the final pit stops] ahead of Lewis, I still wouldn't have won the race."
"That's a pretty important point that not many people know. He was much faster and the tyre wear was much better than ours on the soft tyre."
The two lost opportunities the British driver probably regrets most are Barcelona and Hungary. In both of these races, he was clearly the fastest on the track.
However, in both races, he lost two positions after the first corner, and that cost him too much in the end. He added:
"With my starts in Barcelona and Hungary, I potentially lost two wins. That's a bigger loss than in Canada or Silverstone. There, I was fast enough to win. We were faster than Max in the race, and I lost the position to do that from my side."
"There have been a few instances, but fewer than people would think from the outside. But overall, I feel I have been a much better driver this year than last year. That is the most important thing for me."
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