Norris praises McLaren's and Ferrari's driver line-up
Having built up an even bigger margin in the drivers' standings, McLaren's Lando Norris has praised the Woking-based outift's and Ferrari's driver line-up, claiming that both squads have two drivers "that push each other" hard.
Despite his strong showing at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, Lando Norris struggled for a consistent performance on the opening two days in Shanghai. However, the British driver managed to make inroads with his car for Saturday's main qualifying session and for the 56-lap Chinese Grand Prix to finish second behind his team-mate Oscar Piastri.
McLaren's team boss Andrea Stella revealed in Shanghai that Norris achieved this turnaround from struggling early in the weekend to challenge for pole and victory because he learned from Piastri.
Confronted with the swing in performance during the Shanghai weekend, Norris praised McLaren and Ferrari for having such strong driver pairings which means that they can push each other constantly, always extracting the maximum from the car.
"Probably apart from Ferrari, I don’t think there’s another team that has two drivers that push each other anywhere near as much. And for us, that’s a huge advantage. Even if you have the same car for everyone, if you have a team with two drivers who can push each other, they’re always going to beat everyone else that’s just on their own.
"So we have a great car, we have a great team, but we also have two drivers that are pushing each other more than any other team has. And that will always triumph—even [over] the best driver on the grid. That’s one of our biggest strengths at the minute—how we’re able to learn from each other.
Comparing his driving style with Oscar Piastri's, Norris has revealed that they often want different things from the car, which was evident in Shanghai where the Briton struggled to adapt his driving style to the understeer that characterized his McLaren on the opening two days of the Shanghai weekend.
"Because of what Oscar said: we have different ways we drive. He wants some things on the car, I want different things. But normally our ways align and we always want the same thing in the end.
"Oscar’s ability to adapt to a track like this was impressive, and something I clearly struggled a lot more to do. I hate understeer. The one thing I almost hate as much as brakes not working is probably understeer, and that’s what we had this weekend. As soon as we put the Hards on, for instance, my pace was a lot stronger because I had some front finally.
"But yeah, I’ve learned a lot this weekend from Oscar and his ability to adapt to these different situations. It’s definitely something we’ll maximise because it’s helping us beat every other team at the minute."
Piastri echoed his team-mate's words, claiming that the Shanghai weekend highlighted the differences in driving styles between him and Norris which was evident last weekend.
"I mean, I think we’ve got different strengths and weaknesses as drivers. And I think this weekend there were certain points where it just worked a bit to my favour, naturally. And I think there’s been other weekends where it definitely hasn’t, and I’ve had to try and look at things from how Lando’s driven and apply them myself.
"I think that is definitely the advantage—or an advantage—we have. Having strong team-mates, you always learn from each other. It’s impossible to measure how much lap time you gain from pushing one another, but you do gain something, that’s for sure.
"So I think we always push each other, always learn things. I’ve certainly learned a lot in the last couple of years. Maybe there were some things to learn the other way yesterday, but I think every single weekend we are learning one thing or another from each other," concluded Piastri.
