Lando Norris trailed McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri by 34 points in the championship standings following the Dutch Grand Prix in August.
Lando Norris credits improved consistency in recent months for his resurgence to the forefront of the world championship battle.
The British driver, 25, overtook McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri by a single point after a commanding victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix.
This win followed a string of five races since early September, in each of which Norris finished ahead of his Australian teammate.
“Mentality has improved, approach has improved, preparation has improved,” Norris stated.
“But also consistency. It’s not like I’ve won the last six or seven races, but I’ve been consistently out there and consistently scoring points.”
“That’s actually the thing that’s given me the biggest boost over the last few weeks.”
How to follow Sao Paulo Grand Prix on the BBC
Aston Martin remove at least seven F1 design staff
Norris has gained 35 points on Piastri since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, a race where Piastri won and Norris retired due to a fuel-line failure.
That result positioned Piastri as a strong title contender, especially given his consistent performance throughout the season up to that point. Norris still trails Piastri by one victory, with Piastri holding six wins this season.
However, Norris refuted the notion that he had begun taking more risks since that race, feeling he had nothing to lose.
“Maybe in qualifying you think: ‘Well, may as well just go for it.’ But it’s not like every approach, every lap I do is, ‘I’ve got nothing to lose here, let’s try a bit more.’ That’s certainly not true,” he said.
“I definitely wouldn’t put it down to that. I would put it more down to just having worked hard and having a very good team around me. I’d put 99% of it down to that, 1% a mix of various different things. But most results coming from work done rather than mentality or things.”
He also stated that he wasn’t focused on leading the championship for the first time since the fourth race of the season, unless prompted by others.
“I don’t think in terms of races and achieving the actual dream of being a champion, I still at the minute don’t feel any difference. I think nothing’s completed, nothing’s done,” he said.
“There’s still, what, over 120 points or something available, so it doesn’t mean anything still for the time being. It’s a nice thought, again, to look on and think about, but otherwise it’s nice to be there, but to win next weekend and win the final race, that’s still my goal.”
Oscar Piastri has only secured one podium finish in the last five races.
This weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix marks the beginning of a series of four races in five weeks, concluding the season.
Piastri enters the race following two challenging weekends at the US and Mexico City Grands Prix, where he struggled with pace.
“The last couple of weekends have been a little bit more tricky, but we’ve got pretty clear answers on why that’s the case,” he said.
“There’s not really too many mysteries on what’s happened. There’s questions on why some differences have popped up in terms of how you drive and stuff like that, but everything is explainable.”
“Part of the struggle the last couple of weekends is what has been working for the majority of the season wasn’t working very well.”
“But trying to now know what I need to do is just about going out and doing it whereas I think the last couple of weekends it wasn’t always obvious what I needed to change exactly.”
“So from that side of things we could have the same situation here, we could have the same in Vegas for example, but I feel like now I’m much better prepared for whatever kind of conditions we get.”
What does Piastri need to do to get back on track?
The McLaren drivers still face a threat from Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, who trails the leader by 36 points after a strong run of results that have seen him win three times and secure a second and third place in the last five grand prix.
This has reduced the Dutchman’s deficit to the leader from 104 points.
Verstappen said: “For me, there’s no pressure. Even if I don’t win it, I still know that I drove in a really good season.”
“To still be talking about being in this fight is already remarkable in the first place. For sure, it has to do with the turnaround of the team. They never gave up and that’s the strength of the team. Nevertheless, when you’re over 100 points behind and then still we’re talking about being in this fight, I think it’s very impressive.”
However, the four-time champion emphasized that he remained the underdog in the title race.
“To the end with four races, it’s still a pretty big gap,” Verstappen said. “I need to score a lot more points (than them) every single weekend, which is not that straightforward.”
“It comes down to us optimising everything and nailing the weekend. And besides that, probably, we need a little bit of luck on one round to create a bigger offset. But we’re going to give it all. And if that’s going to be enough at the end of the year, I don’t know.”
“But there’s also not much to lose. I mean, worst case we have P3 and best case you can win a championship.”
“There is an opportunity, of course, that we can win it, so we are going for it all in.”
Comments can not be loaded
To load Comments you need to enable JavaScript in your browser