Lando Norris cannot do one factor different drivers do – and it nearly killed F1 dream
A worrying Lando Norris habit almost led to a disaster and handed the F1 title to Max Verstappen.
Norris dominated the Singapore Grand Prix last week, finishing 20.9 seconds ahead of Verstappen and narrowing the gap to the world champion to 52 points. However, despite being under no pressure, Norris had two close calls, almost crashing on both occasions.
The first incident occurred when he veered wide at a right-hand turn, narrowly avoiding contact with the barrier. Later, he lightly brushed against a wall, with a slightly firmer impact likely to have ended his race.
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Following the second near-miss, his race engineer Will Joseph intervened via radio, urging Norris to maintain “full concentration” and reminding him to “take a drink”. The latter instruction was a nod to Norris’s unusual practice of not hydrating during races.
Singapore is notoriously demanding on drivers, with the sweltering heat and relentless track layout often leaving them dehydrated and struggling to focus. This may have been a factor for Norris, who reported feeling “dizzy” after the race.
He said in September, per Racing News 365: “I don’t drink ever during a race. I often don’t run with a drinks bottle. I think I’ve drunk from my water bottle twice ever in Formula 1 – and both those times when I’ve just been very ill, like in Barcelona a couple of years ago. I do try and do it.
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“I just really struggle to and often just forget. [I] don’t like drinking during the race. But there’s other ways around of just making sure I have good energy with bars and certain drinks that I can have small amounts of, but of high concentration.”
Norris has also admitted difficulty in consuming food and drink before races due to nerves, saying: “Before the races, I still get just as excited and just as nervous. I struggle to drink anything on Sundays, just because of nerves and because of pressure.”
The gruelling nature of racing in Singapore was highlighted when Mercedes stars Lewis Hamilton and George Russell missed their post-race media duties because of “borderline heatstroke”. Silver Arrow team principal Toto Wolff explained: “They did not feel well, borderline heatstroke or something like that but they have had water.
“They would not have been able to go to the [media] pen. There were no bad feelings or any annoyance. It is just that we had the doctors with them. But they are all good.”
Hamilton, who finished sixth having started third in the grid, was later quoted in a Mercedes press release: “It is hard to describe the range of emotions you feel when we have a difficult race like that.”
