‘I barely eat on Sundays’ – title hopeful Norris on beating nerves

World Championship contender Lando Norris says he struggles to eat and drink on Formula 1 racedays because of the nerves and pressure he feels to do a good job.

The McLaren driver, 24, who is hoping he can challenge Red Bull’s Max Verstappen for the title this year, also said he “gets so nervous” before qualifying.

But he said he can “deal with it much better now”, after “struggling so much” when he first started in F1.

Norris said: “There is always pressure. I barely eat anything on Sundays. I struggle to drink on Sundays. Just because of nerves and pressure.

“But it’s how you turn that into a positive, how do you not let it affect you in a bad way and how do you use it in a good way to help you focus on the correct things?”

Norris heads into this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix 70 points behind Verstappen following his dominant win in the Netherlands last weekend, his second of the season.

He said: “I know there is more pressure and the team are probably going to feel a bit more pressure, and externally there will be more pressure on me.

“But it is up to me to deal with it the way I feel best and, at the same time, I don’t really feel it that much.

“I’m comfortable that I just have to go out and drive, and that’s all I can do really, and not think about these things. The place I am now, fighting for wins and fighting for championships, honestly, I feel like it’s [just] another weekend.”

Norris added that knowing a mistake can be so costly makes dealing with qualifying or a grand prix so difficult.

“When you enter Q3 or any qualifying lap, when you have to go and deliver, it gives you butterflies every single time,” Norris said.

“It’s so much nerves, so much pressure. And you know if you do one thing – brake a metre too late, turn in at the wrong timing or whatever it is, it’s game over.

“And the knowledge of that just puts you under a very tense feeling. But it’s an amazing feeling at the same time, that you maybe can’t replicate in many other things.”

Norris admitted he had “changed a lot” since he entered F1 in 2019, at the age of 19.

“I almost cared too much about other people’s opinions, rather than doing my own stuff and being myself when I came into F1.

“I just feel like over time, with pressure and focus on doing the job I have to do, I found a better balance of life.

“My focus and job I am here to do is the same whether I laugh or joke less – it’s just how I’ve changed – and I still love what I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

Norris has acknowledged that the odds are against him in his quest to overhaul Verstappen, who finished second at his home race on Sunday.

But he and McLaren know the constructors’ title, in which they trail Red Bull by just 30 points, is more realistic.

“We are pushing hard every weekend and our goal is to catch both,” he said. “From the constructors’ side, it looks a lot more doable than the drivers’ side but we’re pushing hard and that’s all we can do.”

Verstappen has not won since the Spanish Grand Prix in June, six races ago, and said his advantage could be “easily overturned”.

The Dutchman said: “If I win it or not, it’s not going to change my life. Would I like to win it? Yes, of course. But it’s not in my hands with the performance of the car.

“I just try to do the best I can, give feedback, try to make it faster. If that is going to be enough to the end of the year, I don’t know. But I do know we’re going to give it everything as a team to try to be more competitive than we showed in Zandvoort, because that was a poor weekend for us.”

If McLaren do win the constructors’ title, it would be their first since 1998.

They scored more points than any other team in 2007 but were disqualified because of the spy-gate scandal, in which a McLaren employee was caught in possession of nearly 800 pages of confidential Ferrari technical information.

Lewis Hamilton – who was at McLaren in 2007 as team-mate to Fernando Alonso, as both finished the season just one point behind Ferrari’s champion Kimi Raikkonen – said of Norris’ title hopes: “There are a lot of points on the table so it’s definitely not impossible.

“Ultimately, Max probably only needs to finish second every race to win at this point and he [Norris] would have to win every single race, and that still wouldn’t be enough, so there would need to be some fortune in it.

“What’s really exciting is there is a real chance McLaren could win the constructors’ title.

“I was there when we did win that last constructors’. It got taken away from us but we won it in performance that year. That will be really exciting for them and the sport.”