‘He can win world championships’ – Stella backs Norris to recover from mistakes as he acknowledges where McLaren need to improve

McLaren boss Andrea Stella has backed Lando Norris as “performing at world championship level”, following on from comments by the Briton in which he suggested that he had not been driving at the standard required to fight for the title in the first half of the season.

Despite being Max Verstappen’s closest challenger in the drivers’ standings – though the gap remains at 78 points – Norris stated ahead of this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix that he felt he hadn’t “performed at the level I need to perform at if I want to fight for a championship”, as well as voicing his intention to iron out “little mistakes”.

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When asked about Norris’ remarks, Stella acknowledged that, while the 24-year-old’s tendency to be his own worst critic can have its advantages, he believes that Norris has displayed his potential to become a world champion.

“The first thing I make of his comment is it kind of confirms his style, [which] is quite self-critical,” Stella explained. “He tends to look occasionally at the half empty part of the glass. In reality, I think that he definitely has the potential of a world champion, and he is performing at world championship level.

“If we compare against perfection, then definitely we have opportunities [to improve]. But I like that we compare ourselves against perfection, because this is what we need to do. I’ve been very encouraged that every little opportunity has been analysed in a great level of detail.

“Lando has always been very open and transparent – like he [is] with the public – definitely with the team, and we are together in trying to nail and polish all the possible situations in which we need to be better at delivering according to the potential.

“[He is] definitely world championship material – like in everything, [for] Lando, Oscar [Piastri], the entire team, every single opportunity to improve needs to be attacked with determination to improve.”

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Stella was then pushed on whether the errors Norris mentioned could be a sign that he is struggling with the pressure of being in a championship fight, to which the Team Principal acknowledged the role of the team in some of the situations where they have got things wrong.

“Lando is definitely world championship material. He performs already at levels that I’ve seen in the past in some of the great champions I had the luck to work with,” Stella reiterated.

“He’s on a journey, like the entire team is, and if we compare against perfection, then we do see some opportunities. I mentioned before some of the opportunities coming in the first lap, for instance, and trying to find the balance between being aggressive or simply staying away from situations or accidents.

“We definitely have some things to clean [up] on the start itself, which is not only [down to the] driver, but also the team’s responsibility.

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“Then I think he had a couple of situations in the races in which he might have taken some of the responsibility, but I think it was the team’s responsibility – like if we think of Canada, a case in which we didn’t pit Lando for the late Safety Car before the pit entry, or if I think about Silverstone and the final stint.

“That’s the team’s responsibility – if the team had operated at higher standards, then Lando would have more points in the championship. Definitely as a team we kind of appreciate that he puts some of the pressure on himself or he raises his hand and says, ‘it was on me’.

“But I think I have enough experience to say, ‘don’t worry, that’s on the team – keep doing the good job, keep working to improve on your own opportunities’, but definitely we as a team have quite a lot of work to do as well.”

In terms of whether Norris can still take the fight to Verstappen in this year’s title battle, Stella added: “He can win world championships – that’s a statement that is [in] capital letters. In terms of this year’s championships, certainly we don’t give up.

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“Numerically, from a drivers’ championship point of view, it looks like there’s a big gap to fill, and we are chasing Max Verstappen, so definitely he’s not going to make it easy for us.

“But we are excited to be in this position, and definitely Lando is not in this position because somebody helped him – Lando is in this position because he performs very strongly, and that’s something that we should acknowledge and realise in terms of his achievements, not only in terms of the one, two, three opportunities in a season in which he could have done better, because this is normal, and this is normal for every world champion in every season.”

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