Norris: Piastri pushes me harder than Riccardo

After the first four races of the season, Lando Norris is ready to admit that Oscar Piastri is pushing him harder than former McLaren team-mate Daniel Ricciardo did in his day.

For all his well-earned reputation as a first-class professional, the Australian has not been able to fully adapt to the characteristics of the machines made at Woking, so the parties agreed to leave a year before the contract expires. Daniel’s place was taken by his young compatriot, who had previously won F3 and F2 titles on his first attempt.

According to Norris, his working relationship with Piastri is quite similar to that with Riccardo.

“It’s not much different from the way I worked with Daniel last year, you can’t say much has changed now,” Lando replied when asked about the differences between his former and current teammates. – We both tell the team about the behavior of the car and say what we want to achieve with it, and our preferences are quite similar.

I wouldn’t say that Oscar and I have the same flying style, but comments and complaints usually coincide. I think this is something positive. He is a pleasant, absolutely normal man, a realist and a hard worker. It is interesting to work with him. I think there’s a personality difference between him and Daniel, but he’s still fun to hang out with.

However, he’s a very fast rider and he’s probably pushing me a little bit harder than in the previous two years.

In four of the five qualifiers held in 2023, Norris was clearly ahead of his partner. Only in Saudi Arabia did Oscar start from a higher position than Lando, who was eliminated in the first qualifying session after hitting a fender.

But Piastri is making steady progress, and in Baku in qualifying on Saturday, ahead of the sprint, he lost just 0.032 seconds to Norris, although he was unable to reach the final. In Friday’s qualifying, which determined the starting order in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the gap was more than -0.330 seconds. But over the course of Sunday’s race, Oscar showed good pace overall, confirming his potential.

The Race journalists carried out a comparative analysis of Riccardo and Norris’ performances last year and compared them to Piastri’s results – taking into account sessions that took place in similar conditions. It turned out that in 2022 Lando was 0.355% faster than Daniel, and this year his lead over the new partner is 0.313%.

At first glance, the difference is small, but it must be taken into account that Piastri is the debutant of the championship, who is still adjusting to the team, to the car and to Formula 1 in general, and Riccardo has 232 Grand Prix behind him.

In addition, the authors of the comparison emphasize that the results of races and qualifying sessions were taken into account as a whole, but a more detailed analysis shows that when passing various types of turns, Oscar often does not yield to his partner at all. Everything indicates that his results will grow and that the number of errors, which is already few, will decrease.

This is what Norris means when he admits he feels increasing pressure from Piastri, so it will be very interesting to follow the 22-year-old Australian’s progress.