3 days Ago By [email protected] (Daniel Moxon)
Lando Norris has declared Ferrari the chief threat to McLaren 's constructors' title chances after overtaking Red Bull . For the first time in over a decade, McLaren sit at the championship summit. Their 20-point lead looks flimsy on paper, but they have been outscoring Red Bull for months now and clearly have the much quicker cars right now.
So significant is their performance advantage that Norris is looking further back when assessing threats. Ferrari are 51 points behind but, after Charles Leclerc won at Monza two weeks ago and pushed Oscar Piastri all the way in Baku on Sunday, the Italians look like their main rivals right now. Norris said: "I think we thought coming into these three races we’ve got now - Monza, Baku and Singapore, that our main contenders would be Ferrari.
They have been our strongest competition lately. Between Carlos [Sainz] and Charles, they have been two guys who have been performing well and putting us under pressure. "Especially with Charles' pole positions and his race win last weekend gave them a good boost.
They're performing well and they seem like our closest competition at the minute so, from a constructor point of view, we're probably more worried about Ferrari than we are about Red Bull. "We know Ferrari are going to be good next weekend [in Singapore]. But like Oscar showed today and I think I showed today, our car works well everywhere.
We're good at the high speed, the medium speed - I feel like we struggle more in the slow speed, like here in Baku, but clearly we still had the quickest car today and that's a nice surprise for us and a good confidence booster." While McLaren are in pole position for a first teams' title since 1998, Norris still has plenty of work to do if he is to become the drivers' champion. He drove superbly to rise from 15th on the grid to finish fourth, one place ahead of standings leader Max Verstappen , but remains 59 points behind with seven rounds remaining.
That poor qualifying result, which saw the Briton hampered by yellow flags on his final flying lap of Q1, could prove consequential by the end of the year. And Verstappen reminded his rival of that after a weekend which wasn't as damaging to his title defence as it might have been. The Dutchman said: "You can also turn it around and say [Norris] could have done a better job too.
We learnt a lot. We will try to do better. If we do a better job ourselves, they need to do a perfect job to the end of the year.
" And Norris may also face a fight to hold onto second in the championship after the result of the Azerbaijan race. His team-mate Piastri is fourth but only 32 points behind, while Leclerc has moved to within 19 points of the Briton. Catch all the action from Formula One on Sky Sports and get exclusive access to races, qualifying and much more for every Grand Prix.
From Max Verstappen to Lewis Hamilton, you won't miss a lap on Sky Sports..
