With his championship hopes all but over, Lando Norris offered a frank assessment of his title-challenging season ahead of this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

While Max Verstappen looks set to wrap up his fourth consecutive world championship, perhaps as early as this weekend in Las Vegas, McLaren’s Lando Norris has been his closest challenger throughout the season.

Lando Norris: I’ll always be honest with what I say

Claiming his first F1 Grand Prix win earlier this year at the Miami Grand Prix, Norris and McLaren’s title challenge strengthened considerably through the middle third of the season.

But both sides started on the back foot – Red Bull’s start to the season was similarly dominant to the advantage the Milton Keynes-based squad enjoyed throughout 2023.

While McLaren has caught and surpassed Red Bull in the Constructors’ Championship, a title it may still win with a strong triple-header to round out the year, this has largely been due to the underperformance of Sergio Perez while McLaren has had two strong drivers as Oscar Piastri has ably backed up Norris’ charge.

Norris slowly chipped away at Verstappen’s points lead, getting it down to 47 points after the Mexico City Grand Prix, only for Verstappen’s performance in Brazil to all but end any hope of an unlikely title win as he extended his lead back out to 62 points.

While Norris remains mathematically in contention, the form book suggests it is merely a matter of when, and not if, Verstappen wraps up the title – the circumstances required for Norris to win essentially need three consecutive race retirements for Verstappen, with victories and second places for Norris.

But, even if this year hasn’t netted him the ultimate prize, it’s been a year of immense learning for Norris with a mixture of mistakes – both from his side and the team’s – in the face of battle.

Asked whether he reckons he’ll learn from these mistakes, and whether he’ll be back after taking those lessons on board for next year, Norris offered a mature and honest assessment of his season – one he admits he didn’t enter believing was a title-contending chance.

“Yeah, I think going into a season with a mindset of let’s try and win it, it’s a very different mindset to what we had this year,” he said.

“It’s been a different story throughout the season. We started miles off the pace. We started third, fourth, best team at the beginning of the year. We were for a long time.

“Red Bull was extremely dominant, more dominant than any other team has been for the rest of the year. We’ve been extremely quick and probably one of the quickest for the most part.

“But when we have been, it’s been by a much smaller margin. So to create the differences that they were able to create in the beginning of the year, it’s pretty much impossible.

“I feel like I’ve still done a very good job, but it’s clear… One thing you’ll always get from me is the honesty of whether I’ve done a good job, a bad job, or whether we as a team have done a good job or a bad job and I’ll be honest with what I say.

“I think there’s been plenty of races, there’s been a good few where we didn’t perform to the level we needed to do, as a team. Silverstone, for example, is one where we should have had probably a 1-2. And we couldn’t have finished further from a 1-2.

“There are sides where, as a team, we didn’t perform at the level we needed to do as a world championship-winning team but there’s also been plenty of times when I’ve not performed at the level I need to perform at to win a championship.”

With Norris’ championship rival being the battle-hardened Verstappen, racing for a team well-accustomed to winning, Norris admitted it may have been a jump too far to make at the first time of asking.

“I probably wasn’t outright ready to go up against Red Bull and Max. I think I am now, and it’s probably too late to do that,” he said.

“Maybe there are other drivers in the past that were ready for such an occasion. But no one has gone up against Max so early on in kind of their career, halfway through the season, and put up, I think, a pretty reasonable fight.

“I mean, I’m there, but there’s no one else doing it, you know? So I’ve done my best. I’ve not done well enough. And I’ve always admitted that. And I think Max is probably one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1 and I don’t think you’ll probably get a much better driver than Max ever in Formula 1 ever again.

“That’s my opinion but that’s what I believe in and for me to go up against that belief, to fight against that person that I know is so good, takes a bit more than what I probably achieved this season, but I think what I’ve done since the summer break is closer to what I need to be, and I think that is close to being good enough to fighting for it next year.”

Norris’ sentiments were echoed by former McLaren and Red Bull star David Coulthard, who told PlanetF1.com the speed of McLaren’s ascendancy almost seemed to come as a surprise for the Woking-based squad.

“I don’t think McLaren entered the year thinking ‘This is a world championship year’. Psychologically, it’s just a little difference,” the Scot said.

“I think they went in going, ‘We’re on the right track, we’re rebuilding’ and then, suddenly, when they found form, they almost didn’t know how to own it.”

Coulthard pointed out that, while Verstappen is well used to “getting his elbows out” to achieve his goals, this year is the first time Norris has been faced with a scenario that has forced him to race with a different mentality to how he’s raced in F1 since entering the sport in 2019.

“It’s been quite a comfortable ride for Lando – he’s had a good background and good support from Zak [Brown, McLaren CEO] before he was in Formula 1,” Coulthard said.

“I’ve done track events with him when he was still in the lower formulas, I’m not going to say it’s been easy because I’ve not walked in his shoes, but it’s kind of taken the trajectory that Zak saw his potential and brought him up into Formula 1.

“It would appear that Max had quite a feisty coming through karting and what have you, so I guess we all get ready for the battle at different points.

“Lando is brilliantly fast, that’s his superpower. The rest – the getting the elbows out, your Sennas, your Schumachers – they redefined what was acceptable. Max is doing the same.

“Lando has got to… there’s no point going in the boxing ring and then complaining the guy punched you in the ear. ‘My ear is ringing!’… you’ve got to just get in and own it.”