With the F1 2024 title all but decided in Brazil, Lando Norris must seek to emulate Nico Rosberg’s approach if he is to bounce back strongly.

With Verstappen winning from 17th on the grid in Brazil, it’s put the F1 2024 championship almost out of reach of Lando Norris with three race weekends still to go.

Max Verstappen strikes the killer blow in tense championship fight

Having had his championship lead slowly but surely whittled away as Red Bull’s RB20 fell off the boil, some signs of positivity crept back in recent weeks as the focus went into restoring the balance that had been lost through its mid-season updates.

Singapore, scene of Red Bull‘s annus horribilis in 2023, gave back some pep in the step as Verstappen salvaged second place, but the real question mark hung over the Americas triple-header. COTA, Mexico, and Brazil – three tracks at which Lando Norris appeared likely to eat further into Verstappen’s lead and set up a scintillating final trio of races to see the Dutch driver hang gamely on.

But it hasn’t quite worked that way. Sure, it hasn’t been pretty, as Verstappen’s focus switched to the task of besting Norris, rather than worrying about the others. COTA was tough but fair, and tempers hadn’t quite cooled by the time Mexico rolled around. The Dutch driver took things a little too far in his quest to defend, underlining the concern under the surface that Norris and McLaren were an unstoppable force and couldn’t be restrained. After all, does someone with faith in their equipment really need to drive with such… vigour?

Verstappen arrived in Brazil under a cloud. It had been a tough few days after Mexico, in which he’d had to put up with an eye-opening level of criticism. No longer the underdog, Verstappen is discovering what Lewis Hamilton did in 2021 – people like to see the dominant defeated, and the plucky upstart come through.

Verstappen had to deal with the criticisms of luminaries like Damon Hill, who questioned whether fair driving is within the three-time F1 World Champion’s repertoire. It’s a valid observation to make. But, if a driver is willing to take the penalties associated with such driving, then the concept of fair driving is redundant – results are what matters and, having successfully cost Norris time and position in Mexico, the Dutch driver achieved his goal.

Having lost 10 points in Mexico, the chessboard was set up for a further beating at Interlagos. With a grid penalty looming for the main race, the Sprint running went off without too much drama – McLaren maximised their pace and dynamic to secure a 1-2 in the correct order, while Verstappen was penalised for some audacious Virtual Safety Car shenanigans. A fair cop, with Norris duly nibbling away a couple of points as a result.

Qualifying then couldn’t have gone much worse for Verstappen. The timing of everything couldn’t have gone much more against him – such as the red flag that knocked him out in Q2, or the later stoppage which came just moments after Norris vaulted into provisional pole position. With the penalty applied, Verstappen would line up in 17th with Norris on pole position. Surely, this was an open goal for Norris to pull himself that much closer.

Verstappen’s tactics in Mexico led to my comparing him against the standards set by Michael Schumacher and the late Ayrton Senna in the past – the willingness to engage in more nefarious exploits to further their own interests. While this mindset might indicate weakness to some, a character flaw that somehow negates their abilities, those same drivers were also able to show moments where their superiority was indisputable – moments of magic to elevate their mystique beyond the others.

Like Ayrton Senna at Donington Park in 1993, the greatest opening lap in F1 history, and Michael Schumacher’s incredible Barcelona win in 1996, there was a sense of inevitability from the moment the lights went out to start the race at Interlagos.

Just two minutes into the race, Verstappen was into the points – having carved his way past six cars on the opening lap, he passed Lewis Hamilton for 10th into Turn 1 at the start of Lap 2. Pierre Gasly and Fernando Alonso were also despatched quickly, while even Oscar Piastri – having shown his mettle in the Sprint – was powerless to hold back the Red Bull.

Of course, some fortune did fall Verstappen’s way – as Norris was very quick to point out afterward. Having got caught in a train of cars as Charles Leclerc held Verstappen back, it was Red Bull’s strategic team that did the rest – taking the gamble on staying out as conditions worsened, and waiting for the inevitable red flag.

But fortune didn’t play a part in how the rest of the race unfolded. With everyone reset, having been able to fit fresh tyres, Verstappen got past Esteban Ocon after a Safety Car interlude and simply vanished up the road. Norris, having been fourth at the restart, sailed off the road at Turn 1 and dropped to seventh – needing his teammate to let him back through to salvage sixth.

They say rain is the great equaliser – something which may have been more true in the past than today – and the Red Bull clearly showed signs of being quick at Interlagos in the dry conditions of the Sprint running, but, in a car of comparable competitiveness, the Dutch driver was, quite simply, peerless.

Lando Norris’ mentality and how he can bounce back

Sunday at Interlagos will be a defining day in Norris’ career, with plenty of introspection required after what was a drubbing, in every sense of the word. There’s no doubt Norris is an exceptional driver. He’s fast, he’s consistent, and good in wheel-to-wheel battle. He’s been built up by McLaren to lead their challenge forward, but F1 2024 suggests Norris isn’t quite the full package yet.

In 2020, a young and immature Norris spoke of Lewis Hamilton to say that the then six-time F1 World Champion was in a car that should “win every race” and he “only had to beat one or two drivers, basically”.

It’s the exact scenario Norris has found himself in this season – the McLaren was the most versatile, if not the outright quickest, car for a good chunk of this year. He’s put in some stellar drives – Zandvoort and Singapore were sublime, but there have been days where Norris has been bested by his less experienced teammate.

Maximising results under pressure hasn’t been a forté either. Think the Sprint race at COTA when, just moments after Carlos Sainz latched on, Norris snatched a brake into Turn 1 and let the Spaniard through – barely staying ahead of Leclerc in the process. Compare that to Verstappen, on much older tyres, resisting him lap after lap during the Grand Prix, without putting a wheel wrong.

There’s a sense that Norris hasn’t quite managed to get the most out of the package that’s been under him, and Interlagos exposed that to a far greater extent. Fortunate to escape penalty for simply taking off on another formation lap despite no green light – as Verstappen pointed out while he sat stationary on the grid watching all the cars ahead move off – Norris couldn’t hold Russell back into Turn 1 and duly cost himself any chance of opening up some ground on the pack of cars behind.

The Mercedes has been an inconsistent car this year, with occasional flashes of speed, but the McLaren has very much been the superior machine – yet Norris was powerless to do anything about Russell until it was too late.

The mistake at Turn 1 following the Safety Car simply exacerbated a poor day, and, had Piastri not been in a McLaren, seventh place from pole position on a day when Verstappen romped to a 20-second victory from 17th was, to use a Ron Dennis colloquialism, sub-optimal.

Norris was not particularly dignified in defeat either, clumsily pointing to Red Bull and Verstappen’s luck and fortune regarding the red flag stoppage. While technically correct, it smacked of sour grapes – Norris started the second half of the race, on equal terms, with just Pierre Gasly between himself and Verstappen. And still ended up losing further positions.

It’s hard not to feel sympathy for Norris. It’s been a season where, thanks to Red Bull dropping off, he’s found himself propelled into a championship battle he likely wasn’t expecting.

With the backing of McLaren increasing as his position strengthened, the pressure ramped up very quickly. Not only is Norris fighting for his maiden title, but he is doing so against a friend – a complex dynamic to come to terms with, and one which he likely didn’t grasp fully until he realised just how far Verstappen is willing to go to beat him.

Norris is inexperienced in these matters. Verstappen, in contrast, is very much not – he has been fighting at the front, or close to it, since 2016, and is able to stare down critics and hostility from rivals with an unshakeable self-belief that has brought him into the discussion to be regarded as the greatest F1 driver ever – well before even turning 30. At the first time of asking, is it really that unthinkable that Norris might not be fully equipped to handle it?

Verstappen’s championship lead is now all but unassailable. Even if he sat out the last three races, Norris would need near-perfection to pull it off, while Verstappen only needs to finish in the top two in Las Vegas to secure his fourth consecutive world championship. Assuming all goes to plan for Verstappen over the next few weeks, it’s a done deal.

Norris needs to make the most of his downtime to lick his wounds and regroup for the final trio of races. It must be extremely difficult to come to terms with the realisation that, as great as you are, there is a driver on the grid who simply has more in their armoury – even the ‘weakness’ that Verstappen’s red mist supposedly is, rarely affects him. If anything, it fuels him further.

Assuming the title is lost between now and Abu Dhabi, what’s imperative for McLaren and Norris is to go away over the winter and address the shortcomings. As unpopular as Helmut Marko’s words proved to be with CEO Zak Brown, Norris has shown his mentality isn’t quite right yet – he (and McLaren) have made silly mistakes under pressure.

In the last two weeks alone, these include overtaking while off-track and expecting it to be forgiven, and embarking on a formation lap that wasn’t permitted. And that’s ignoring how fortunate McLaren was that the VSC took an age to be deployed during the Sprint, allowing race leader Piastri time to get Norris past him.

What’s concerning is that Norris spent Sunday evening on social media, visibly ‘liking’ negative comments made about him, and attempting to save face from his earlier interviews by congratulating Verstappen with a now-deleted post on Instagram.

Having spoken in the past about his mental health struggles, social media in the immediate aftermath of a poor day professionally is probably not the best escape. While Verstappen appears able to harness the power of external criticism, there are precious few who can take such a battering – and Norris has already previously indicated this is not a strength of his.

With his head low, and a championship challenge in tatters – it might get worse before it gets better. He can’t relax just yet – there’s a Constructors’ Championship to be won and, unless the impossible happens, it’s not likely Piastri will be willing to play ball in the final three races. With Ferrari showing immense speed, and Red Bull not yet fully out of the picture, there is a chance that McLaren may yet go home without any silverware after a stellar season.

But F1 2025 refreshes everything and, unlike this year, Red Bull isn’t likely to steal a march in the early stages of the championship. Next year looks set to be a four-way fight for both championships, and Norris, having failed to show consistent superiority over Piastri, will have to find more within himself over the winter.

Like Nico Rosberg did after being bested by Lewis Hamilton in 2014 and ’15, the German driver went away, focused on identifying and addressing every possible weakness and shortcoming within himself and, while perhaps not gifted with the same incredible innate talent of Hamilton, produced a jaw-dropping display of dedication and determination made possible by his self-sacrifice during 2016.

It resulted in Rosberg achieving the unthinkable and toppling Hamilton in equal machinery – a testament to the effort the German driver put in, which he realised had taken too much from him as he stepped away from the sport immediately afterward.

With Norris up against one of F1’s GOATs, a generational talent disguised off-track as a pal, coming to terms with that talent and figuring out how to elevate himself to that level – as Rosberg did – will be imperative, and it’s something he can do with McLaren’s help.

What won’t work is decrying the moments of defeat as being down to “luck, not talent” – such an attitude will only keep him blind from the realities of the situation, and prevent him from figuring out what it is that’s needed to take that step forward.

Verstappen’s “I’m a three-time F1 World Champion” stance may rankle with those who view it as arrogance, not confidence, but the Dutch driver is absolutely correct to have adopted a mindset that corresponds to his strengths. Not many thrive in the face of pressure, but Verstappen does. Is it arrogance when you have the ability to be able to back yourself up?

None of his critics have achieved what he has and is producing, week-in, week-out. Just one of his current rivals has managed to do what he’s doing and, assuming a fourth title is delivered, only five people in the entire history of the sport can boast what Verstappen can. Why listen to those who can’t?

It will take a special talent and effort to topple that mentality, assuming Verstappen has a car in any way capable of a battle in 2025. Norris has the raw ingredients in terms of car control and speed but, mentally, now needs to pull the recipe together and deliver, just like Rosberg managed almost a decade ago.

Can he learn from this lesson? Undoubtedly so. Can he? The responsibility for this will be on him, and McLaren, being able to be completely honest with themselves.