Norris admits: 'By then I should have beaten Max Verstappen'
F1 News
Lando Norris is off that pesky zero: since a week, the McLaren driver can call himself a Grand Prix winner. Finally, it might be said, after 109 failed attempts to be the best. Although it could just have been years earlier that Norris managed to triumph. One race stands out - the Russian Grand Prix in '21 - that Norris could have, probably should have won. But a wrong strategy in the closing stages made Norris miss out completely.
So, three years later, it is still a prize. In Miami, he thrilled his McLaren team by trouncing Max Verstappen. So many times the Dutchman had proved a barrier, this time Norris did manage to beat the Red Bull Racing driver. That has been a rare feat since the start of the '22 season, partly given the dominance of the cars Verstappen has had at his disposal since then.
Norris could have triumphed in Qatar
Yet during this period of supremacy there has been a moment when Norris could have beaten Verstappen before, the Briton says: "Yes, there was one. One opportunity, and this was Qatar last year. To win the main race was maybe a bit more of an ask. I think Max, I don't know what Max has kept to Oscar [Piastri] and I was like five seconds, six seconds, I think."
"But as a sprint race, the sprint race was the loss. I don't know if there was a main race that I've missed out on, to be honest. And that's obviously the more valuable one, the one that means a lot more to you. So I kind of want to say no. I kind of want to say I don't think there was a Sunday where I've thrown stuff away. I've thrown away maybe a podium or a P2. But I think every opportunity where I've been there to try and take a win, I've been there. And there's a couple of times when I've been blocked to those opportunities. One was Singapore last year and Carlos took it. And another one was a Australia this year where the two Ferraris were ahead. But apart from that, there wasn't a Sunday."
"And I think that's why I never lost faith. I never didn't believe in what I could go out and do," concluded the Briton.
This article was written in collaboration with Kada Sarkozi.