Lando Norris ramps up the strain on George Russell as world champion claims Mercedes have a ‘massive benefit over everybody’ after lightning quick begin to season
It was a remark that riled Lando Norris, and one he remembered. And a sentiment to which he now returns.
Last year George Russell saw the McLaren coming out of the stalls like a rocket. He was in a Mercedes stuck in glue. Envy, rivalry, gamesmanship and partial reality conjoined in the comments then uttered.
Russell predicted that Norris’s team could win every race in 2025. They won 14 out of 24, as it transpired, Norris and Oscar Piastri sharing the laurels. Max Verstappen, for the record, won eight, a record beyond excellence in a moody Red Bull .
Anyway, back to the needle between the British pair, who rubbed along in their karting days. Russell is the slightly older at 28, to Norris, 26. The age gap can sometimes seem bigger, their contrasting modes pulling in either direction.
At the time of writing, Russell had just taken a dominant pole for the sprint race ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix proper on Sunday – by six-tenths of a second from the next non-Mercedes car, that of a certain Norris.
This was on the back of Russell qualifying eight-tenths fastest in Melbourne a week ago, a precursor to a surefooted victory that put him top of the championship table for the first time in his career.
George Russell is the early front-runner in the Formula One world championship standings after winning last week and taking pole for the Chinese sprint
Lando Norris, meanwhile, is willing to reverse the pressure put on him 12 months ago
One race won, but how many more does Norris believe his ‘pal’ can – or indeed should – secure?
Willing to reverse the pressure put on him 12 months ago, the world champion said: ‘I can’t remember by how much I won in Melbourne (in 2025)? One second? I know how everyone talks about how big our gap was last year, but we certainly didn’t get close to winning every race.
‘And they (Mercedes) were a lot closer to us than we are currently to them. They have a big advantage over everyone but that is because they have worked hard and they deserve to be in the position they are in.
‘You would expect Mercedes to dominate for a while. We will do our best to change that.’
Norris, in fact, fared better in sprint qualifying than he might have anticipated, putting in a decent lap, ahead of Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, who dreams of a finale featuring an eighth world title. The veteran 41-year-old is enjoying the reset of the regulations after four years of hurt in the ground-effect era.
Norris, though, is unconvinced about the current cars. They induce sudden changes of pace as the power unit’s half-electric component unleashes its grunt, harvested through a lap, at unpredictable moments, thus causing disparities between cars close to each other.
This is a dissertation in itself. Please just take my word for it, and we can move on.
Asked if he was annoyed that the revamp was a blow to his chances of defending his title, Norris said: ‘No, that’s life. Sometimes it goes your way and sometimes it doesn’t.
Norris, who is the defending world champion, has accepted that he will probably be unable to defend his title this year
‘That is the way it has always been. I am sure I would be happier if I was fighting at the front and confident we could win a race. But I accept we are in the position we are in because we have not built a car that is quite quick enough and we do not understand everything we would have liked to.
‘We need to work hard to catch up but if Mercedes are winning it is because they deserve that.’
Is he ruling himself out of the title picture? ‘No, I have never said that. I have said the opposite. It is a long season, and I hope we can catch up. It plateaus to a certain extent. It is still early days.’
Norris, who said a big crash could be caused by the change in power deployment, added: ‘Safety is my priority. I will always care about that.
‘Addressing this is not easy for F1. You can’t just go back and change it to what it was before. Some drivers are happy now, and drivers making their assessments will always be influenced by results.
‘These regulations are not as fun as they used to be. Everyone (driving) would agree with that. But they present a different challenge. Formula One (bosses) knows there is room for improvement.
‘It is not a sport you can change from one day to the next. They are going to see how the first few races go.’
And, as Norris knows, that means advantage Russell.
