Lando Norris was tetchy after losing – or, barring miracles, losing – the Formula One championship of the world to a force of nature called Max Verstappen.

The McLaren man’s comments in Sao Paulo on Sunday night were defensive. He will regret, and I guess recant, saying that it was not talent but ‘luck’ that permitted his Dutch rival to win the Brazilian Grand Prix.

No, it was nothing approaching fortune but one of the greatest drives in the wet the world has seen.

Verstappen, starting 17th, gobbled up three cars at Turn 3 on the outside on the opening laps, shades of no less than Ayrton Senna at Donington in 1993, and then there was composure and skill to keep his Red Bull on the road, and devastatingly fast, as several of the other best drivers of their time slithered off it multiple times.

So, you can only excuse Norris for having come up against a talent so numinous you can’t stop it. To borrow from boxing, Norris was a latter-day Frank Bruno, an accomplished fighter for sure but one who stood no chance in Las Vegas going up against ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson that ill-balanced night in 1997.

Now Norris must be asking himself these dark days whether he can ever win motor racing’s greatest prize.

Chances to do so fall to the very best perhaps once in a lifetime. Opportunity may present itself again. It might not. Let’s not forget that no McLaren driver has remotely been in contention to wear the crown since Lewis Hamilton clinched the title for the Woking-based team in 2008.

The McLaren is likely to be strong next year, and Norris may be lucky enough to have another crack at it. If he is granted the chance, the fact is he will have to go about it with far more self-belief than he confronted this season’s big moments.

Here at Mail Sport, we sensed his potential moment of triumph earlier than he did, and before his McLaren bosses did. So there was no lack of support here. We urged him to grasp the nettle. 

We denounced team orders being deployed to deny him victory in Hungary, where his team-mate Oscar Piastri instead won (in so many ways deservedly). We also thought Piastri might have been instructed not to pass him In Monza, where Norris took pole but lost out, again, at the start. Points were lost.

How the ‘scoreboard pressure’, to borrow from cricket this time, would have altered the dynamics of the championship, piling doubts at Verstappen’s door, is a moot point, but one that would have been worth exploring and exploiting.

At Red Bull, they were aghast by the lackadaisical way McLaren were tackling the drivers’ championship. In McLaren’s defence, the constructors’ title was their chief ambition, having not won it this century.

But both the constructors’ and drivers’ crowns were within their grasp, and not mutually exclusive. And had Verstappen been driving the papaya car rather than the blue one, he would have triumphed. Of that there is no doubt. The McLaren has been faster since Miami in May, and Verstappen has been hanging on to his championship lead for his life ever since.

Perhaps McLaren never believed in Norris being able to pull off his own glory, which, if true, hardly augurs well for his career prospects.

If I were the McLaren chief executive Zak Brown, I’d give Norris another year but under strict instructions. One, he cannot sound like a grateful traveller who accepts, as he almost unbelievably expressed it, that Verstappen is the best racer in the world. He is, of course, but a challenger must write that off as nonsense.

Norris too often came over as in Verstappen’s pocket. Hamilton would never have conceded a hierarchical inferiority amid battle. Nor would Schumacher, or Senna, or any performer of the very top rank.

‘Comments’ may be cosmetics, though important ones, and the hard truth is that when it came down to wheel-to-wheel combat Norris was not as naturally gifted as is the new and elect champion. 

Verstappen has a innate ability to position his car at any given moment on the decisively right line, inside or outside (unlike Norris in Austin and Mexico). And perhaps that is the one unbridgeable difference between them.

Norris should be granted another year to show he is worthy of his status. Otherwise, alas, he’s not worth the hoopla.