Lando Norris: Red Bull’s Comeback Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone
Driver Lando Norris has expressed that Red Bull’s resurgence in the last races should not be a surprise, as he prepares to face Max Verstappen in the fight for the championship. After Verstappen’s consecutive victories in Azerbaijan and Italy, the current champion reduced the distance with the championship leader, Oscar Piastri, to 69 points on Sunday, and was 44 points behind Norris, who is in second place. Verstappen’s victory at Monza ended an eight-race winless streak, where he only achieved two podium finishes, at a time when Red Bull seemed to be having performance issues.Norris also commented that the defending champion’s recent victories are in line with Red Bull’s performance at the start of the season. “Max was already winning races at the beginning of the year, he could have won the first round, I think he was very close to winning the second in the sprint or something like that,” Norris added. “They have been fast all season, Red Bull has been good, they brought some upgrades to Monza that seem to have helped them improve even more. So it’s not a surprise, I think we know they are an incredibly strong team and one of the best drivers in Formula 1, so we don’t expect less.” Norris, who has been competing with his teammate Piastri throughout the 2025 season, is 25 points behind the Australian in the standings. The British driver acknowledged that McLaren had performance difficulties in the last two races in Baku and Monza, which also seemed to favor Red Bull’s strengths. “I think they’re going to make life difficult for us for the rest of the season, but we also know that on our part, we’ve had some problems here [in Baku], Monza we clearly weren’t fast enough,” added Norris. “We’ve made improvements, but where Red Bull has been so good and dominant in the past, they still are and we’re not.” “When I was following the Red Bull [of Yuki Tsunoda], there were clearly some areas where they were on another level and we need to understand why.” Norris also commented that his weekend at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was affected by the chaotic qualifying session on Saturday. After Piastri crashed at the beginning of Q3, Norris was the first driver back on track and encountered the end of a downpour, which made it difficult to set a clean lap. «I think as for the final pace, we weren’t bad this weekend [in Baku]», Norris said. «I was still fast in Free Practice 1, Free Practice 2, Free Practice 3 and so on». «If it had been a normal qualifying… I think the difficult conditions, the light rain, going out first on the track, it all added up to it being the worst weekend». “Our position in the race, I think if I had started second, I think I would have finished second. Honestly, I don’t think we had the pace of Red Bull. That was very, very clear. I think on the tracks with less downforce, we still seem to have problems.” “We still don’t have the confidence we need. We can be fast, but we are not able to repeat it as often as we need and as often as Red Bull does, for example. We’ve had an incredible season, don’t get me wrong, but there are clearly things that are not good enough and we have to keep working on them.”“It’s not uncommon for them to be slow, so I think people should stop being surprised that they’re fast,” Norris said.
Lando Norris
