Lando Norris makes honest admission about the 2024 F1 title battle fight against Max Verstappen

Lando Norris feels he was simply not at the level that he needed to be to beat Max Verstappen in the 2024 title fight. The season was an intriguing one as it started with the Austrian team once again having the best car on the grid. Going into Miami, Verstappen had only dropped one race, and even that was a result of the driver suffering from reliability issues.

Things started to change in Miami, however, where McLaren introduced its first major upgrade. With the help of the upgrade, the team closed the gap to Red Bull at the front, and Lando Norris will pick up a win with the help of a safety car intervention. As the season progressed from that time onward, the car from the British team continued to get better.

Red Bull, on the other hand, continued to regress, and Max Verstappen found himself in more and more battles with Lando Norris. It was during this time that the gamesmanship from Verstappen came into play as he took wheel-to-wheel battles into the gray areas.

Looking back at the season, Lando Norris admitted that he felt that he didn't do a good enough job to beat Max Verstappen last year. Speaking to Sky Sports this week, the Brit reflected on the 2024 season and said:

"I want to race against Max and I do enjoy those moments," Lando Norris said. "Some things obviously didn't end up in the perfect way, in the perfect scenario. I think coming from the points deficit that I have, even though the majority of the time we were quicker, and I had a better car for a lot of the races, those kind of things, which I can happily admit, there were some things where I just didn't do a good enough job."

Talking about a seeming gap of level that he had against his title, Norris added:

"I wasn't simply quite at the level that I need to be to race against Max. But when we're talking about that, we're talking about probably going up against one of the hardest attacking-defence guys you can ever go up against."

In the end, some skillful racing aided by a very consistent run throughout the season allowed the Dutch driver to clinch the title despite McLaren's momentum.

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Lando Norris on Max Verstappen making the most of the points lead

Lando Norris also felt that Max Verstappen made the most of the championship lead he had last year. The premise that if both drivers crashed out, the Dutch driver wouldn't lose any points, prompted Max to be aggressive against the McLaren driver in races like Austria and Mexico.

Reflecting on the Dutchman's strategic approach, Norris said:

"Like we saw in Mexico, and I don't want to go through all these things again, but like we saw in Mexico, very willingly sacrificed himself for the benefit of the overall outcome."

Praising Verstappen's mentality, he added:

"And when that's the mentality of a driver, whether it's Max or any driver, that's a very difficult one to ever come on top of when you're 50 or 40 points behind in the championship, because it's never going to be a win for me."

Lando Norris ended the 2024 F1 season second in the championship and would be hoping to build on his first title battle and take things to the next level in 2025.