McLaren driver Lando Norris’ openness in admitting his frailties is “used against him”, according to his former team-mate Carlos Sainz.<\/b><\/p>\n
Sainz, who partnered Norris at McLaren from 2019-20 and has remained friends with the Briton, told BBC 5 live Sport: “He opens [up] to the media and to people more than any other driver on the grid – and people use that against him.”<\/p>\n
Sainz, who now drives for Williams, said: “What you see on TV is what he is as a human being. He’s very good at showing himself.<\/p>\n
“I sometimes find it a bit ironic and a bit frustrating. He is probably the only guy being 100% genuine on his feelings and the way he thinks but then people are going back at him.”<\/p>\n
Norris ended Friday practice at the Hungarian Grand Prix fastest by 0.291 seconds from team-mate Oscar Piastri.<\/p>\n
Norris is 16 points behind the Australian before this race, which marks the end of the first part of the season before Formula 1’s summer break.<\/p>\n
Sainz said Norris being criticised for his openness was “a bit sad” because “probably the 19 other drivers have a similar level of doubt and a similar level of self-criticism inside their heads, they just don’t explain it out loud because we prefer to keep it inside and not say it to the media”.<\/p>\n
Norris has admitted that he has made errors this season that have cost him points.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the year, Norris was struggling with a lack of feel from the front axle of the car, which made it difficult for him to anticipate its behaviour when he was pushing to the limit.<\/p>\n
McLaren have made a change to the front suspension to improve this aspect of the car for him, and Norris has been more comfortable since the Canadian Grand Prix in June.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Norris made errors on his qualifying laps in Canada that left him sixth on the grid, and crashed into Piastri after a misjudgement during the race.<\/p>\n
He then won in Austria, and inherited victory at the British Grand Prix when Piastri was penalised for his driving behind a safety car.<\/p>\n
Norris then took pole in Belgium last weekend but was overtaken on the first lap by Piastri, who went on to win.<\/p>\n
Asked about Norris’ prospects of beating Piastri to the championship this year, Sainz said: “If I base my decision on speed and talent, I’m 100% sure he has that to win a World Championship.<\/p>\n
“But F1 also involves a bit of luck, mental resilience, being at home with a car in the right times.<\/p>\n
“It doesn’t really matter if he doesn’t win this year, he’ll get another chance. He has 10-15 years in F1. He has the potential, talent and speed.<\/p>\n
“If he gets it this year, great I’ll be happy for him. If not, he might get his chance later.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren driver Lando Norris’ openness in admitting his frailties is “used against him”, according to his former team-mate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-321750","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114980271217104468","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}