Norris: F1 2023 has "been my best year"

That was the year Norris made his F1 debut with McLaren, with which he has remained after signing two contract extensions in 2021 and 2022.

Although the papaya team had a tough start to the season just gone, its development work helped it go from battling to escape Q1 to regularly being Red Bull’s closest challenger – all of which contributed to Norris scoring a personal best seven podium results and leading the early stages of the Silverstone and Austin races.

When asked to rate his own 2023 season in an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com, Norris replied: "I think it’s been my best year.

“I think it’s been our best year as a team. I guess a lot it's just for the obvious reasons – the success that we’ve been able to have from after the start that we’ve had.

“I think there’s been a lot of great performances – both in terms of just racing through and having some good ones. Mexico [where Norris went from 17th to fifth with a series of eye-catching overtakes around a slow getaway at the second start] probably being the highlight of all of that.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella recently told Motorsport.com that in 2023 Norris had the “ability to understand how to drive the car, where are we with the tyres, what these changes of conditions mean, how [he] should adapt my driving style” to help McLaren stick closer to Verstappen in races than many other rivals at certain stages last season.

On hearing these words, Norris explained he nevertheless feels “I still have to adapt every weekend” to work towards the best race performances in the critical element of tyre management on the fragile Pirelli tyres.

“I’m still not super comfortable every weekend on [thinking], ‘the car is going to do this this weekend and it does that’, half the time it doesn’t,” he added.

“So then I’m sort of like, ‘Ok, now I need to drive it a bit more like this’ and all of these things.

“Formula 1 I think is often always too shortly judged. If one driver has two good weekends in a row they’re like ‘oh, he’s back’. But the next weekend then it’s gone again and it’s [the opposite].

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL60

“So, I think I’ve always had some good races every now and then, but when I look at it as a season, on ‘out of all of these races’, a lot more consistently I was delivering on the Sunday.

“No matter the conditions, no matter if it was hot or cold or if the car was really quick or struggled a bit more, or if the set-up was where I wanted it or where it wasn’t, if I started at the front or the back – I could always kind of make the most of whatever situation I was in.

“And I think that’s the thing I’ve improved on this year. [It] was being able to adapt even more to all of these different scenarios and different conditions that challenge you.”

Norris put his progress down to “time and effort put into it”, which he said included “a lot of simulator stuff, a lot of data, learning” – including going over his previous performances and the drivers of the other McLarens during his time with the team.

“I’m not going to say the secrets of it or whatever, just a lot of simulator is probably one of the biggest things,” he said.

“But also time on looking into the data against me and Daniel [Ricciardo, 2021-2022], me and Oscar [Piastri, 2023-onwards], even me and Carlos [Sainz, 2019-2020].

“We went back that far to kind of understand what I was doing good and bad then, what he was doing good and bad then, and same for Daniel and same for Oscar now. Just work, basically.”