Lando Norris has secured back-to-back second-place finishes at the British and Hungarian Grands Prix following McLaren's huge improvement in performance; watch the Belgian GP from Spa-Francorchamps live on Sky Sports F1 from July 28-30
Wednesday 26 July 2023 11:37, UK
McLaren chief executive Zak Brown is confident the team's stunning recent upturn in form will convince Lando Norris to "stick around" amid uncertainty over the Brit's long-term future.
Norris, one the most highly rated young drivers in Formula 1, has maximised the performance of his upgraded McLaren to finish second at the last two races, in Britain and Hungary, having come fourth in Austria a round earlier.
Before McLaren's upgrades turned around a woeful start to the campaign, which saw Norris finish above ninth just once in the first eight races of the season, there had been speculation over whether the 23-year-old Brit would seek an early exit from his contract, which runs until the end of 2025.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 after the Hungarian Grand Prix, Brown said: "I think the way you keep him is you give him a good race car.
"And as long as we can give him a good race car, he loves the environment, he loves the team, he's been on this journey.
"Obviously we were all a bit frustrated at the start of the year, but now two seconds on the trot, he's qualified fifth, second and third.
"So I think as long as we keep doing that, then he'll stick around."
Norris' streak of success has been impressively supported by rookie team-mate Oscar Piastri, who finished fourth at Silverstone and fifth at the Hungaroring to deliver the two best results of his debut campaign.
An opportunist start saw Piastri pass Norris - and the Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton - to jump from fourth on the grid to second at the opening corner, before the Australian remained comfortably ahead of his team-mate on the opening stint.
However, McLaren decided to pit Norris first, which enabled the Brit to take advantage of the powerful undercut at the circuit and emerge from the pit lane ahead of Piastri.
McLaren insisted that the decision was not a case of favouring their more senior driver, but rather protecting him from the potential of Hamilton attempting an undercut of his own from fourth.
"In terms of the undercut that we had at the first stop, you just go really with the sequence that is natural, because you cover with the car that is more at risk, and then you cover with the other car," McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said.
"Lando's out lap was just super, super quick, which meant Oscar lost the position. To be honest, our approach to these situations is to think about team first. We think as a team, and then we deal with the internal situation."
Brown said the team were open to the idea of reversing their drivers' positions later in the race, but the fact that Piastri, who was hampered by damage to his car's floor, fell backwards meant that the decision was taken out of their hands.
"That was a conversation on the radio," Brown said. "We thought that was the best strategy for the team. We were considering whether to do something later in the race, but we were on the what was the best strategy for the team at the time.
"We wanted to see how the pace settled it on the new tyres. It was something that we spoke about on pit wall, and said, 'let's see where we are on lap five from the end, and make a decision then.'"
While Piastri admitted his lack of experience was a factor in falling back in Sunday's race, it was almost exclusively luck that denied the 22-year-old a maiden podium at Silverstone, when the timing of a Safety Car enabled Hamilton to leapfrog him.
Brown, who decided to terminate former McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo's contract a year early to enable the signing of Piastri, has been hugely impressed with the rookie's maturity.
"He's very calm," Brown said. "He's very mature for his age and being a rookie, and he's a student.
"When you watch him over the weekend, he looks at the data, he understands, he asks questions, he's calm, and then he goes out and applies it the next run, or the next day.
"Come qualifying, he's right there. So he's a very mature driver, who doesn't kind of worry about the Friday morning lap time."
Thursday July 27
2pm: Drivers' Press Conference
Friday July 28
8.55am: Formula 3 Practice
10am: Formula 2 Practice
12pm: Belgian GP Practice One (session starts 12.30pm)
1.55pm: Formula 3 Qualifying
2.50pm: Formula 2 Qualifying
3.35pm: Belgian GP Qualifying build-up
4pm: Belgian GP Qualifying
6pm: Ted's Qualifying Notebook
Saturday July 29
8.55am: Formula 3 Sprint Race
10.30am: Belgian GP Sprint Shootout build-up
11am: Belgian GP Sprint Shootout
12.40pm: Formula 2 Sprint Race
2.30pm: Belgian GP Sprint build-up
3.30pm: BELGIAN GP SPRINT
5pm: Ted's Sprint Notebook
Sunday July 30
7.25am: Formula 3 Feature Race
8.55am: Formula 2 Feature Race
12.30pm: Grand Prix Sunday - Belgian GP build-up
2pm: THE BELGIAN GRAND PRIX
4pm: Chequered Flag - Belgian GP reaction
5pm: Ted's Notebook
Next up is the Belgian GP, the final race before F1's summer break - watch all sessions of the Sprint weekend live on Sky Sports F1 from July 28-30. Stream the Belgian GP and more with NOW.
