Lando Norris has insisted he wouldn’t have won the 2024 Formula 1 title even with a “perfect season” as Red Bull was never as uncompetitive as McLaren at the start.
Miami was the sixth race. Prior to that, Norris had finished every race in points, and had 2 podiums.
“We had just too big of a [points] deficit to catch up from the beginning of the season and we could not because they’ve been too strong still.”
No, they couldn’t catch up because they’d made too many mistakes and failed to capitalize their chances. Starting from Miami, it was 80% of the season ahead of them - that’s more than enough time.
“We were the fourth-best team at the beginning of the year. Red Bull have never been the fourth-best team, or worst let’s say, ever.
Oh yeah? Like when Haases were catching up Max in Austin?
I don’t know how McLaren can be so delusional. You can’t learn and grow if you reject reality.
Lando has a long-term problem with this type of stuff. I don’t know if it’s age or if they haven’t provided him the media training just say it’s your fault and move on because people will also move on. The excuse making sucks from a team that is supposed to at the absolute pinnacle of motorsports. That being said, I’m going to defend McLaren a little bit here because Red Bull at the beginning of the year did have a sizable gap in performance, which probably had something to do with a little braking mechanism that the FIA later had to clarify was illegal. This has been a sport about bending rules and finding loopholes, but there was a noticeable drop off in performance after the rule “clarification”. McLaren did absolutely fuck themselves as well though.
The drop off started even before the ‘smart’ braking mechanism ban though that being outlawed brought about the biggest drop off
