Yesterday at 06:30
Lando Norris has claimed he feels like he is "cool", but
acknowledged the ice-cold Oscar Piastri makes him look like he is
"emotional" by comparison. The McLaren driver has fought a close F1
drivers' championship battle with his team-mate across the current
season, but is widely considered to be less consistent and less
unfazed than the Australian, especially when the tension of the
title fight rises. Norris has made high-profile errors when the
pressure has reached an apex, which have cost him valuable points
in the hunt for a maiden crown. The Briton is 34 points behind
Piastri in the standings after the Dutch Grand Prix, but that
deficit would have only been 16 if it were not for the unfortunate
chassis issue that forced him into retirement at Zandvoort.
Nonetheless, in an intra-McLaren contest that is broadly being seen
as contingent upon who makes the fewest mistakes, Norris is viewed
to be on the back foot. It is a situation that has only been
compounded by his bad luck in the Netherlands. Norris has four
years more experience in F1 than Piastri, which is, therefore, a
key area in which he feels he has the upper hand. "As much as I
always hated using experience as an excuse or reasoning for things,
you end up going, 'yeah, well, I just learned about this because of
experience'," Norris told Viaplay before the Dutch Grand Prix. "And
that is my advantage over Oscar. "But he certainly doesn't lack in
speed, talent, ability in any sense of the word," he stated of his
team-mate. Norris is generally considered to be the slightly
quicker of the two, at least at this stage of their careers, but
the nine-time grand prix winner does not see it that way, viewing
Piastri to be on par with him. "So, I know what I'm going up
against," he said. "I'm going up against a guy who is the same
speed as me and just as good as me." The 25-year-old has often been
criticised for how he conducts himself in the media, being judged
to be too open with the press. It is part of a wider picture that
plays into the narrative that he is considerably less composed than
the unflappable Piastri and that the championship fight is between
two very different characters behind the wheel of an F1 car.
However, Norris maintains he is "cool" in the cockpit, even if
Piastri makes that appear not to be the case. "He's incredibly
calm," he added. "He's cool. I feel like I am, but he makes me look
like I'm emotional."
