Lando Norris has made a great impression in his first two years as a Formula 1 driver, but now it gets serious. In more ways than one.
The reading of a new driver’s potential is always best taken from their peaks. Averages mean less as drivers arrive in F1 at different stages of their evolution, with different experience levels and data banks. Peaks generally give a more accurate foreshadow of a driver’s future level – and some of Norris’s have been exceptional.
But in his third season those peaks really need to become a driver’s standard performance. Then that standard performance needs to be comparable with the very best if they are to acquire that special elite status. Which may well be within Norris’s grasp.
But any shortfall from that will be made very apparent this year, as he is measured for the first time against Daniel Ricciardo, a megastar who has put up a hard check against more than one driver’s momentum in the past.
Beneath Ricciardo’s Honey Badger smile is a ruthless and insanely competitive operator
Jean-Eric Vergne, Sebastian Vettel, Daniil Kvyat, Nico Hulkenberg and Esteban Ocon are all drivers whose reputations were lessened by being directly compared to him. The only team-mate unscathed was Max Verstappen.
Here is Ricciardo’s qualifying record against those team-mates, taking into account sessions where direct comparisons were possible, and with lap time differences converted into a percentage in favour of the faster driver over the season to even out circuit lengths:
It’s a formidable record and probably one Norris needs not to dwell on.
What makes Ricciardo so strong? It’s everything, the whole package. The core of it all is simple raw speed that put him only 21-18 down in qualifying to Verstappen over three seasons and trounced everyone else.
But he has built around that a truly formidable armoury. Time without number he has revealed a savage pace late in the race and proceeded to pick cars off, testimony to his ability to carry speed while retaining tyre life. Like Lewis Hamilton, he can be every bit as much of a tyre whisperer as Sergio Perez but combine it with scintillating pace.
Another key part of Ricciardo’s racecraft is that remarkable ‘send it’ ability to outbrake others from a long way back without running wide in the corner.
He doesn’t so much win outbraking contests as ambush the other driver who doesn’t even realise there is a contest until Ricciardo is alongside.
He has the ability to encompass different car balances in his driving style and still work out a way of being quick. The change from the aggressively front-loaded Red Bull to the less responsive Renault in 2019 meant a little bit of muscle memory to unlearn, but he still managed to outperform as quick a team-mate as Nico Hulkenberg there.
Norris has talked before about how he and former McLaren team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr needed slightly different things from the car, with Norris needing to load it up earlier into the corner and then have it respond mid-corner, whereas Sainz was later and more aggressive with the initial turn. It meant the advantage swung between them at different types of corner. Ricciardo will always find a way.
But perhaps even more important than such details is Ricciardo’s natural way of leading. He doesn’t do it by force, but charismatically gets a team of people around him sharing his stupid jokes but taking their lead from him. He lends the team a tone.
For Norris – a naturally warm and funny character himself – it could be disarming because beneath Ricciardo’s Honey Badger smile is a ruthless and insanely competitive operator. Norris might find an intensity there he has not encountered before.
What Norris has got on his side includes his own talent. This is the guy, don’t forget, who before he’d even made his race debut had instantly proved a very close match to Fernando Alonso in his Friday practice drives of 2018. He knows the McLaren team already and is highly popular there.
He’s learned much since his F1 debut two years ago but there are almost certainly lessons lying in wait from his new team-mate. If he can go bat-for-bat with Ricciardo over the season, he will become hot property in the way his contemporary George Russell already is. This is a huge test.
