Martin Brundle believes Lando Norris is now the firm favourite to become Britain’s latest Formula 1 champion this year. Norris, 25, took the championship lead for the first time since April with a dominant victory in Mexico City on Sunday.
Team-mate Oscar Piastri, 24, had been ahead for seven months but a loss of form in recent races opened the door. McLaren have already secured the constructors’ title and, with four rounds remaining, Sky Sports pundit and former F1 driver Brundle has backed Norris for individual honours.
He said: “I think Lando can take it, unless Oscar can return to the form that he had earlier in the season and providing they don’t step on their own tails at McLaren.” That said, both McLaren drivers still have Max Verstappen to worry about – his third-placed finish meant he left Mexico with a 36-point deficit to Norris, having entered the weekend 40 points behind Piastri.
Verstappen acknowledged he needs to do more than that to close the gap and said: “I lost 10 points to Lando. I said before the weekend, everything needs to go perfect to win [the title] and this weekend didn’t go perfect. So that’s your answer. I think it’s going to be tough, but let’s see what we can do in other tracks.”
Brundle agrees the mountain the Red Bull racer now has to climb is simply too high. He said: “After that performance at the weekend, I believe Max has got a lot to do, unless he has a few weekends like Austin [where he took 23 points out of Piastri’s lead].
“Of the remaining four events, I believe McLaren will be faster in at least two of them. It’s two against one – Max doesn’t have a rear gunner up there and, every so often, a Ferrari or a Mercedes is grabbing the bigger points, the top three points as well.
“I believe it’s between the two McLaren drivers, unless they step on their own tails and hand it to Max. Max effectively needs 12 or 15 points per weekend to compensate for weekends like I believe in Qatar, for example, the McLaren will be strong – probably Abu Dhabi as well.”
A delighted Norris said after his Mexico win that it was “easily my best performance” of the year. But he was unwilling to get too ahead of himself and added: “There’s still a long way to go, so I just have to keep doing what I’m doing, keep trying to be consistent against some very quick guys around me.”