Lando Norris claims Oscar Piastri feedback ‘more in line’ with his than ‘previous years’

Having already said that Oscar Piastri is pushing him harder than Daniel Ricciardo did, Lando Norris said the same is true when it comes to driver feedback.

F1 2023 marks the first time that Norris finds himself as the experienced figure in the McLaren line-up, the Brit into his fifth season of Formula 1 competition with McLaren, while Piastri on the other side of the garage is one of three F1 rookies alongside Logan Sargeant and Nyck de Vries.

And so far Piastri has generally made a strong impression, taking an underperforming McLaren MCL60 into Q3 in Saudi Arabia, just his second F1 qualifying outing, while Norris and Piastri combined to get McLaren on the scoreboard for the first time at the following round in Australia.

With Norris finishing P6 and Piastri P8 at Albert Park, that took McLaren from zero points to 12, lifting them to P5 in theConstructors’ standings.

Norris has said that he feels Piastri is giving him stronger intra-team competition than former team-mate Ricciardo, who was released from his McLaren contract a year early at the end of 2022 due to poor performance.

And now, Norris has added that he also believes the feedback which he and Piastri are providing McLaren is better aligned compared to his days alongside Ricciardo.

“Our comments are probably a little bit more in line than what they have been in previous years,” said Norris, as per Motorsport.com.

“Which is a good thing, just because it’s better a dynamic for keeping the focus for the engineers, the aerodynamicists, the rest of the team back in MTC.

“We kind of want the same anything in general and I think that’s a good thing. So, from both sides, the off-track and the on-track, it’s a good start and he’s keeping me on my toes.”

That is one vote of confidence for Piastri then, and he gets another from McLaren’s team principal Andrea Stella.

He believes that Piastri’s competitiveness is a good reference and motivator for Norris, arguing that this is a driver pair more closely matched than the Norris-Ricciardo days.

“Certainly, what we see is that Oscar is close to Lando in most of the corners, like [in Australia] he lost a couple of tenths in a single corner, which gives references to Lando himself,” Stella explained.

“当你的队友竞争,然后他comes a reference for you, and you take advantage like Lando is doing.

“I would say this year the closeness between the two drivers is certainly much better than what we saw last year.”

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More to come from McLaren and Lando Norris

In many ways, McLaren’s underwhelming start to the campaign has been a blessing in disguise for Piastri, allowing him to find his footing in the series without a huge deal of expectation, especially considering he was coming back from having not raced in 2022 while on the sidelines at Alpine.

But searching for an opening into the top 10 is not a position where McLaren intend on remaining, their upgrade for the next F1 2023 round in Baku the first of a development programme which McLaren hope will make points scoring a regular occurrence once more at the very least.

That would take McLaren back to what is familiar territory for the team and Norris over recent years, and as Norris has proven, whenever there is a sniff of a shock podium or pole position, he will be right there to take it. He is a six-time podium visitor and 2021 Russian GP pole-sitter after all.

So, it feels like this is the point where Piastri will really need to ensure that he has another gear to step up his performances, and that he can continue to help develop the car in the right direction, as McLaren have their sights on running at the front once more in the coming years.