Lando Norris has explained what he must do to “come back strong” in the second half of the F1 season.
The 24-year-old feels he is “paying the price” for “trying too hard” recently, which he believes has cost him “a fair amount” of points as he looks to challenge Max Verstappen for the championship.
More realistically, McLaren’s best chance of winning the championship may come from the battle of the teams, with the Woking outfit closing the gap on Red Bull from 115 points after the Chinese Grand Prix to just 42 points as F1 heads into the summer break.
On their current trajectory, McLaren will beat the Milton Keynes-based team to the crown. However, Norris feels he has lost points in the standings recently due to “stupid” mistakes, despite the team appearing to be on a good run.
Asked about the cause of the error, he told the media: “There were different reasons, just different things.”
“Obviously I didn’t have a good start. I probably lost quite a few points right off the start.”
That was demonstrated again at the Belgian GP on Sunday when Norris made a mistake on Lap 1 that dropped him a few places and “could have easily cost him a podium place or more.”
He added: “There was no reason, I just tried too hard and paid the price for it.”
Norris ‘not involved’
There is a developing narrative around Norris’s race, particularly when starting from pole position, something he has done five times in his F1 career.
In those five pole positions, he has never been leading the race at the end of the first lap, most recently at this season’s Hungarian Grand Prix, a race he could have won with a better start.
Another difficult start at Spa-Francorchamps saw him run out and onto the gravel on the exit of the first corner, dropping him from fourth to seventh.
Norris, however, remains positive, insisting that despite recent setbacks, he is “happy” with where he is and where McLaren are as he plans to “come back strong” after the summer break.
“Forget about it,” he said when asked how he would regroup now that the summer break is approaching.
“We still have a week to go for briefings and stuff, so I’m going to stay at the factory for half a week, just to review everything, make sure we have a good break, and honestly, I think we did.
“I feel like there’s a lot of positives. Yeah, it’s just not quite right for us yet, but I feel like we’ve still got what we need and what we want.
“So I’m happy. We’ve got the ability to fight and fight well, but I’m not around, so let’s review everything, go away and forget about it for a while and come back strong.”
