Laudable Lando Norris Feels That The Top Two In 2021 May Remain The Same For Next Year?

The evolution of a Formula 1 driver is something like the following: A rookie- stage 1. A point scorer at some point- stage 2. A podium getter soon thereafter- stage 3. A race winner- at some point. 4- A world champion. Though, when seen from a Lando Norris perspective, it appears that stage 1 is Rookie driver, followed by very quickly a point scoring driver. So how’s that? At the 2019 Bahrain GP, Lando Norris happened to bag a fighting sixth, which was just the second race for the young McLaren driver. Then, the very same year, his maiden F1 season, he happened to score points in 10 more races. Stage 3- the podium getter arrived early for the highly ranked young driver.

A P3 or a third at the season-opening Austrian Grand Prix in 2020 birthed the legend of the ‘Last Lap Lando,’ an occasion where the 21-year-old made some hair-raising final lap overtakes, including the ones on the Racing Point to step on the podium in just his second season in Formula 1.

Now, only a race win and a world championship thereafter remain the only aims for the mega Formula 1 talent. Though, what we’ve already seen is young Lando Norris making it quite a habit of finishing inside the top five or six in any Grand Prix. It’s not taken him all that much to get the measure of Daniel Ricciardo, when most of us thought that in the Aussie’s maiden McLaren season, it might be the other way around.

That being said, the man who is currently third on the Drivers Standings in the 2021 World Championship, even ahead of Mercedes driver Valtteri Bottas has been seriously outperforming the much-talented and widely-experienced Daniel Ricciardo, who came to McLaren from Renault after finishing two highly-competitive seasons. But so impressive has been Lando Norris’ form that he’s already secured three podiums from ten races, that’s one in every races, which also explains that if he’s got a strong feeling about who’s ruling the roost currently in Formula 1 and who might in the imminent future, i.e., the next course of races, then it beckons some serious introspection and cannot be ignored.

That being said, the young Briton had something interesting to share in the context of the 2022 Formula 1 season, wherein he feels that those who might end up first and second this year may again dominate the next round of Formula 1 World Championship.

That told, here is what Lando Norris happened to share in a media exchange heading to the eleventh race of the current season, about to happen this coming Sunday, August 1a at the Hungaroring:

Mercedes and Red Bull will still be favourites,” he said at the British Grand Prix.

“The new rules are an opportunity, but those two simply have more resources. They’re bigger teams.

“I just hope we won’t be too far away at the start of the season because we’ve been getting closer and closer over the past few years. A lot will be new in 2022, but Mercedes and Red Bull have a lot of clever people who know how to build a car.”

Furthermore, what will make things spicy in the forthcoming season is that teams like Mercedes and Red Bull will no longer continue to enjoy the dominance they already do over other teams like McLaren, which is powered by the Norris-Ricciardo duo, since the 145 million budget cap would have already been put in place come the F1 2022 world championship.

This is, of course, one of the things that may make the forthcoming Grands Prix more of a level playing field instead of seeing an out and out Mercedes and Red Bull show, something that’s been prevalent so far, though not necessarily in that order.