Name: Lando Norris
Team: McLaren
Season 2023
Name: Lando Norris
Team: McLaren
Season 2023
Conclusion: Good year
Personal verdict…
Lando Norris ended 2023 having consolidated his status as one of the top four or five Formula 1 drivers, but also admitting: “I can do better.”
In the context of a season of almost unprecedented perfection from Max Verstappen, the same could be said of any of Norris’s immediate rivals. Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Charles Leclerc, Carlos Sainz and George Russell – to list them in championship finishing order – all made mistakes at one point or another last season. But in the case of Norris, you could see his point.
On the one hand, his season was highly impressive. From the introduction of McLaren’s first major upgrade in Austria, Norris was the second-highest scoring driver of the season with 193 points, 34 more even than the second Red Bull driver Sergio Pérez. Norris outscored Leclerc by 41 points despite his and Ferrari’s strong end to the season, and Hamilton by 61.
But at the same time, there was a strong sense of what might have been.
Verstappen was out of reach, and any criticism that Norris could have fought the Dutchman harder when the Red Bull was coming back through the field in Austin or Brazil was founded on a misunderstanding of the superiority of the most dominant car in history on race days.
In those situations, Norris – like anyone else in 2023 – was literally helpless. Fighting Verstappen only risked chewing up his tyres and losing him race time to his real rivals.
Leaving Verstappen out of it, though,
