VERSTAPPEN F1 Bradley Scanes WANTS NORRIS TO MATCH VERSTAPPEN IN KEY AREA
To cite Max Verstappen as an example to follow for any Formula 1 driver is stating the obvious, but when Lando team principal Andrea Stella sets the triple world champion’s “new standards” for consistency of delivery as the benchmark for Lando Norris to work towards, it’s clear there are particular lessons to learn.
Stella characterises it as the need to recognise when delivering at 97-99% rather than 100% will suffice rather than trying to drag the maximum out of the car while on the ragged edge. That’s significant because it’s the same lesson Verstappen had to learn.
This is far from unusual as every great F1 driver – which Verstappen is and that Norris hopes to be on a trajectory to become – has had to go through this.
For Norris’s tendency to overdo it on qualifying laps, read Verstappen’s run of mistakes in 2018 that became a big talking point as too often impatience undid him early in the season.
Then, Verstappen was in a comparable position to Norris in that he was in a good car but not the best and was at times guilty of overreaching through his desire to wring everything out of it. While the resulting errors were less subtle than Norris’s, the underpinning reasons were the same.