McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes Lando Norris handled the ‘discomfort’ of facing the ‘unique talent’ of Oscar Piastri well respectable.
In his first F1 season, Piastri has gradually found his footing, delivering his best performance of the year last weekend in Qatar, where he won from pole position in the sprint race. withdraw before finishing second of the grand prize.
Every time, Norris had to fight for third place and question himself after making mistakes in the sprint shootout on Friday night and Saturday afternoon, as he felt he could have won pole on both occasions.
Instead, it was Piastri who received plaudits for an exemplary weekend, which appeared to put some pressure on Norris.
Stella admits that Piastri is now doing exactly what was expected of him when he joined the team, but Norris has responded in the right way.
“Lando knew Oscar was a unique talent,” Stella said. “You don’t see this kind of talent in Formula 1 every day.
“So he is an absolute reference, even if he is a rookie, and sometimes Lando knows that he (Piatri) will set the bar very high.
“But if you’re a champion like Lando, you’re going to have to look at this from a positive perspective because it gives you a lot of information to keep improving.”
“There is no champion in the world, no matter what sport, who wins everything. For the driver, it’s faster in every corner, faster in every lap, faster in every session.
Laughing slightly, he added:
“It might be Max (Verstappen) this year, but it’s pretty special.”
Continuing about Norris, he said:
“So for me, Lando found that a little bit annoying.
“But that’s the discomfort you need to be the best in some way.” It’s a curse and a blessing to be a champion. throughout next season.
Since implementing the facelift at the Austrian Grand Prix, McLaren has been pushing to have the second best car on the track.
Norris still believes the MCL60 has what he describes as “balance on the blade”, something he hopes will be corrected over the course of next season.
On McLaren’s confidence in its ability to maintain its upward trajectory until 2024, Stella said: “The confidence you can gain at any given time, you do it by Be methodical, by investing in your tools, by investing in your methodology, the quality of your work. , and then gradually you gain confidence.
“When we deployed the Austria upgrade, thanks to the work done behind the scenes, we had a pretty high level of confidence because we saw in our dev tools that things were catching up. correlation, including between wind tunnel and CFD.
“It increases your confidence level, but until you put the car on the ground, you always feel a bit nervous, and the upgrade process in Singapore is similar.
“We will now be developing the car for weeks in preparation for next year and all this development is happening in your tools.
“Only when the car is on the ground will you know whether the numbers you expect will actually come true or not.
“So you get confidence from the correlations that are going on in the background, in your development tools, but the real confidence doesn’t come until you put the car on the ground.
“So this year, there won’t be many additional improvements, although we will try to iron out this balance issue and most will come to next year’s car, but we will have to wait coming” in February to really see what steps we were able to take.”