McLaren workforce boss Andrea Stella has positioned Lando Norris, who’s but to win a grand prix in his profession, in the identical class of champions equivalent to Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso or Kimi Raikkonen.
Stella labored with these drivers while he was at Ferrari, so he’s properly positioned to make such a daring declare.
Norris‘ renewal with McLaren reveals the deep confidence in him to interrupt by means of and win. And if there was any possibility of sharing a Crimson Bull workforce with Max Verstappen, an in depth good friend of the Englishman, he has had second ideas.
Stella’s reward for Norris
“Undoubtedly, Lando is correct up there with them,” admitted the Italian engineer, now boss of the Woking workforce. “He is the identical class, the identical sort of world champion materials, the underlying expertise he has, the mentality, the work ethic. He is fully prepared and on the identical time, when you concentrate on champions, there’s one thing that characterises them: they simply get higher,” he says.
Curiously, it was rookie Oscar Piastri who received the workforce’s solely race in years, albeit the dash one in Qatar, the identical one during which Verstappen grew to become a three-time world champion. Together with Checo Perez‘s two dash races and Carlos Sainz‘s win in Singapore, they had been Verstappen‘s solely defeats final season.
“The true champions appear to enhance yr after yr. And I feel that is as a result of they use intelligence, they use ethics, and so they have the very best folks round them. They do no matter it takes to get higher and higher, as a result of the game is getting an increasing number of aggressive,” Stella says of the likeable British driver, who completed sixth within the championship, one level behind Alonso and Charles Leclerc, and double his younger teammate.
