Lando Norris’s comeback in the fight for the 2026 Formula 1 drivers’ championship is not limited to recent wins at the Hungarian and Dutch GPs. For Andrea Stella, McLaren’s team principal, the Briton has shown great improvement in two aspects of his driving: assertiveness and self-confidence.
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An example cited by Stella was Norris’s overtaking of Kimi Antonelli, from Mercedes, on the outside of turn 1 at Zandvoort, in a battle that also involved Lewis Hamilton, from Ferrari: “I would say he is definitely expressing a higher level of assertiveness when driving,” said Stella. “The maneuver to overtake Antonelli was a great demonstration of that.”
For the executive, the improvement also appears in how Norris manages risky situations. According to Stella, confidence does not necessarily mean adopting an aggressive stance in every battle. “He is showing more self-confidence, and with self-confidence it is interesting, and I like that a lot. Sometimes, self-confidence is not shown by being the most aggressive. Sometimes you are confident when you think: ‘You know what? I’m not going to fight now because I could lose this battle. It’s a very long race. See you at the end of the race.’”
The ability to choose when to attack and when to back off is precisely one of the points that Stella likes the most. For him, this reading shows confidence in one’s own abilities. “It is this confidence in your means, in your strength, that I like a lot, which means that sometimes you are the one who backs off when the situation becomes too risky. So I see this self-confidence.”
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Stella also draws attention to a detail of Norris’s last two wins: “We need to remember that, in the last two races he won, he did not defend the pole position. He was actually second at the end of the first lap. But I did not notice any drop in his confidence. Instead, he was fast and just preparing his opportunity to then take advantage of his competitiveness.”
“So, I think assertiveness and confidence are probably the two characteristics he has improved the most from a non-technical and non-operational point of view,” concluded the executive.
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