Why Norris wants to ‘do it my way’ in F1 title battle

“I want to do it my way,” Lando Norris says. It’s a comment that encapsulates where he is, just over a third of the way through a Formula 1 season that could end with him as world champion.

The McLaren driver is talking at the team’s factory, before this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix, and he’s contemplating a number of things.

There’s the in-house title battle with team-mate Oscar Piastri; the way to approach racing with Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, still in the championship picture himself, despite his apparent moment of madness at the last race in Spain; and Norris’ own struggles to make the most of a McLaren car that is the class of the field but with which the 25-year-old Briton has admitted to struggling a little this season.

Specifically, right now, he’s exploring his and his team’s approach to having two extremely closely matched drivers in the fastest car in the field, allowing them to race each other and trying to stop their egos tearing the team apart, as has tended to happen in F1 in the past.

McLaren are asking Norris and Piastri to put the team first while chasing the individual dream they have both held since they were little boys. And so far it has worked.

“I think it’s because I’m a great team-mate,” Norris says. He’s smiling, as he so often does. He’s a smiley guy. But he means it.

“That’s not saying anything in the wrong way,” he adds. “Even though your team-mate’s always your biggest competitor, and the guy you want to beat and need to beat more than anyone, I’ve always wanted to have a good time, and have laughs and make jokes, and enjoy my life.

“That’s what I’m here to do at the end of the day, enjoy my life. And we want to do that together.

“We are different people, different characters, but both guys who know deep down we want to beat each other. But we also want to enjoy our journey.”

Usually in F1, expecting team-mates to remain on friendly, or even cordial, terms while competing for the biggest prize in their sport never works.

Racing drivers by their nature are selfish. Sooner or later, the pursuit of the individual goal takes over, and the relationship ends up going sour. Usually as a result of some on-track incident; sometimes just through the intensity of the situation.

Think Nigel Mansell and Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso, Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

McLaren are tying to pull off something more or less unique in modern F1 history. They say they expect their drivers to come together at some point, but they also believe they can manage that, thanks to their transparent approach with them from the start.

It sounds like an impossible dream. But there’s something about the personalities of Norris and Piastri that makes you think that maybe, just maybe, it might work.

They are so different in some ways. Norris wears his heart on his sleeve; Piastri is as cool and reserved as they come. Yet, as a pair, they seem to get why this is important.

“I’m employed by the team, and I have to drive and race for them,” Norris says. “As a number one, it is a constructor. That’s what we have to win in the end of the season. But then there’s the individual championship.

“Everyone’s seen plenty of championships as team-mates turn sour and go in the wrong direction. And that normally leads to many things, like a domino effect of things starting to fail. And that’s what we don’t want.

“We know we still want to race. We’re free to race against each other as individuals, but we also know our sole purpose is to race for McLaren, the team, the name we race under. And that’s something we’re both very proud of doing.”

McLaren believe that operating this way, rather than having one driver who is both usually faster than the other and also has priority in the team, raises their collective level higher.

Norris says there are “pros and cons” to having the guy in the same car as you being your main rival.

“The thing that makes it good is also the the thing that makes it bad,” he says. “Which is that you can see everything the other one is doing. You can learn from each other very easily.

“But the positive is, as a team, that brings us to performing at a very, very high level, and that’s only a benefit for the team.”

Last year, Norris was the leading McLaren driver. Once the team were competitive, a few races into the season, it was him who took the title fight to Verstappen, was quicker much more often than not in qualifying, and won twice as many races as Piastri.

This year, the Australian has turned the tables. Six wins to Norris’ two; four poles to two; 7-4 ahead across all qualifying sessions; 10 points ahead in the championship.

Norris says it has “maybe not been the perfect or dream start”, but he says he’s “still happy” with his performances so far. “It’s been the start that is needed in order to fight for a championship,” he says.

Piastri’s upturn in form is one of the stories of the season. But ask Norris whether it has surprised him, and he says: “I wouldn’t say so. If I was on the outside, 100% I would agree. I’m not surprised, because I know the kind of driver he is. I know what he’s capable of doing. I know the talent he has. And I guess I see it more than anyone else.

“I’m the guy looking at what he does with his feet and with his hands, and how he drives the car. And I’m able to give probably a more accurate answer than anyone else on the outside.”

Norris and McLaren have been open about how a certain characteristic of their car has affected him. Team principal Andrea Stella explains this by saying: “The feeling coming from the front axle is relatively numb.”

Norris explains why this is a particular problem for him. “I can only say how I drive, and what I rely on, and it’s very much feeling through the steering wheel. That’s my primary source of feelings of how I can drive a car quickly.

“When I’m competing against the best in the world, you need everything to be giving you those cues, the best feelings, in order to be most accurate. If you’re missing that little thing, then it’s tough to be the best.

“I’ve had to work on exploring other ways to get the lap time out of myself, whether that’s more my feeling through my body or feet, to trying to work with the team on ways to kinda bring that feeling back through the steering wheel. That’s all part of the job.”

Norris is talking a matter of days after he likened Verstappen’s controversial collision with Mercedes’ George Russell in the Spanish Grand Prix to something out of the Mario Kart game.

That comment was made in the green room before the podium while chatting to Piastri and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. He did not want to expand on it to the media, and he still does not now, joking: “I don’t remember saying it.”

But he will talk about the challenge of racing Verstappen. The two are friends off track, but Spain was not the first time Norris had expressed public criticism of the way Verstappen goes racing.

He is asked how the on-track stuff does not blur into their off-track relationship.

“I don’t think he’s done anything untoward towards me,” Norris says. “He’s raced against me very, very toughly, as he has the right to do. He’s made my life very, very tough at times. And he has the right to do that.

“I’ve said it many times, I have a lot of respect for Max. The driver he is, the person he is, what he stands for all of the time. And what he’s achieved, his four world championships. That’s four more than me, and he’s had a lot more race wins than me.

“I admire those stats, those performances. But at the same time, everyone does what they believe is best. Everyone does what they believe is right. And they race for themselves.

“Some may be more aggressive than others. But everyone has flaws. I have them. Maybe he has them.

“I race in the aggressive way I believe is correct, and he does the same. The stewards are the ones who decide what is right and wrong.”

I ask how he races with someone whose philosophy of racing, as Verstappen expressed in a BBC Sport interview in November, is: “When I race with someone, he will not be able to overtake me around the outside.”

Norris says: “When you’re racing for wins, championships, against the best in the world, you can never expect things to be easy. You learn in go-karting that you can’t at all easily overtake around the outside. That is like a rule number one.

“But it can be done, and it will be done. But the number one goal for us is always to finish. Sometimes, when you try too hard, things can go wrong. You might end up not finishing the race, even though you might be in the right. So sometimes you’ve got to take the safer approach.”

Over his time in F1, Norris has been open about his struggles with self-belief. Verstappen transparently believes he’s the best. Does Norris believe that of himself?

“It’s a tricky question,” he says. “I do believe I’m the best driver. Maybe not on every given day, and every single day.

“I do believe that I can drive quicker and perform better than everyone else on the grid. But to perform at that level consistently is a very, very difficult thing, no matter what the conditions are, what car you’re in, who you’re against.

“That can be a more defining question. Maybe sometimes I find it hard to admit and just say. But I wouldn’t be racing in Formula 1, I wouldn’t be fighting for a world championship, if I didn’t believe deep down that I could be the best in the world.”