The McLaren man lost out in the battle for the F1 2024 championship, with the British driver having struggled to close the gap on Verstappen following the Dutchman’s early season dominance setting him up with a strong lead.
Norris managed to close the gap down to 44 points after the Sprint race in Brazil in November, before Verstappen’s crushing display in the Grand Prix all but sealed his eventual championship win.
Having won his first race in Formula 1 at the Miami Grand Prix, Norris emerged as Verstappen’s closest challenger as McLaren stepped forward to challenge Red Bull in both championships, following up his Miami win with victories in the Netherlands, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi.
But there were moments of weakness, too, with that dramatic day at Interlagos perhaps one of the lowest points of Norris’ title fight as he slipped from pole position down to sixth by the chequered flag.
Norris has been tipped to bounce back strongly in F1 2025, with former IndyCar star James Hinchcliffe stating that he believes the McLaren man is now ready for the challenge of a season-long championship fight.
“Look, it was never this year [2024]. It was never, ever, ever this year,” Hinchcliffe said on the Red Flags podcast.
“We bigged it up because it was a cool story.
“Max won with, like, seven races to go last year, so we were trying to make it a thing. It was never a thing.
“That’s not on Lando. It’s not all on Lando, Lando wasn’t ready.
“Lando won four races, but Max won nine. Like, in no world should Max have lost the championship to Lando, right?
“I think that’s what people kind of forget, like the start of the season is so far away by the time you get to the last quarter, you forget that Max won five of the first six races, like walking away, and everybody then got better.
“So when Lando started being good, so did Charles [Leclerc], so did Carlos [Sainz], so did George [Russell], everybody was trading when Max just got to dominate early on, right?
“I think Lando learned a lot of good lessons, and I think he is now ready to genuinely fight for it next year. I think the team is ready, and I think Lando is ready, but he learned.”
As for what that learning means in a practical sense, Hinchcliffe said that it’s all about confidence – proving to himself that he is capable of beating Verstappen over a race distance on a more regular basis, as well as realising his own mistakes don’t happen very often.
“Honestly, it’s self-belief,” Hinchcliffe said.
“If you look at how Lando would talk about Lando in the first half of the year, versus how Lando would talk about Lando in the back half of the year, there’s a very noticeable difference.
“Every athlete is very hard on himself. Lando was publicly so hard on himself. And, in the second half of the year, you didn’t hear that – even when it wasn’t a great day, he wasn’t sh**ting on himself anymore.
“When Oscar [Piastri] got taken out in Turn 1, and Leclerc goes from 19th to eighth in the first lap, and, all of a sudden the Constructors’ battle is, the race was on. Lando couldn’t make a single mistake – if he lost one place to Carlos, they lose the championship.”
Put to him that there’s a thin line between self-belief and delusion, with podcast host Brian Muller suggesting that Sergio Perez had shown a lack of self awareness through his difficult season for Red Bull, Hinchcliffe agreed.
“It is absolutely a fine line,” he said.
“I’ve got to say that, I guess it’s probably because I’ve been through every situation in the book in 11 years of driving IndyCar, but I can tell when a driver’s quotes are what the driver actually believes when he goes to bed at night and when it’s just this shit he has to say in the media, right?
“Some of the Checo [Perez] stuff was more the latter, right, whereas the Lando stuff, I think, is pretty genuine.
“I think he has that confidence now.”
