Lando Norris hits back at F1 start critics: “Stats don’t mean a lot”

Lando Norris has hit back at criticism over his poor starts in F1, claiming the rhetoric around them has been exaggerated when taking into account the entire season.

Norris clinched pole position for Sunday’s F1 Dutch Grand Prix with a magical lap to beat Max Verstappen by over 0.5s.

The McLaren driver will be keen to convert his latest pole position into his second victory of the campaign.

Speaking in the FIA press conference at Zandvoort to media including Crash.net, Norris was keen to downplay the talk about his poor starts.

“It’s obvious [that I need to lead into Turn 1,” he said. “I know my starts have not been my forte over the last… they’ve not been bad, honestly.

“I’ve still been up there with being one of the best average starters, I’ve just missed out at a couple of races. It’s maybe looked worse than it’s been over the course of a season but there’s a couple of times it’s not been where they need to be, it’s been a couple of times when I’ve been on the front row.

“Like I said, it’s not been for any certain reason, it’s been different things each time. But I feel confident I’ve put in a lot of work to make my starts a bit better and tomorrow’s a new day.”

A worrying stat for Norris is that the five times he’s taken pole position - or started first - in his F1 career - he’s never led at the end of the opening lap.

He lost the lead to Carlos Sainz in Sochi in 2021, while Verstappen got ahead in the Sao Paulo sprint race.

It was a similar story in the China sprint, with Lewis Hamilton overtaking him.

George Russell swooped past Norris and Verstappen at the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix.

In Hungary, it was more costly as Oscar Piastri got by.

However, Norris shrugged off the "stats" surrounding his run of poor starts from pole position.

“Honestly, stats… stats to me don’t mean a lot,” he commented. “You kind of get respect with stats and you lose respect maybe with certain stats. Just numbers on a screen honestly don’t mean a lot from that perspective to me. Of course I care, but they don’t mean a lot, they don’t impact me.

“So what people write and come up with and those kind of things are different. It’s like the overtaking awards and stuff - you’re always going to overtake more when you qualify terribly and you’re going to have more chance to go forward. I’ve started towards the front a lot of times and I know my stats aren’t the best for that, more often than not I’ve gone backwards rather than holding positions but that’s just what

“I’ve done so far and I’ve worked hard and am working hard to try and change that. But it’s not something that affects me, I’m not going to try and go out tomorrow to suddenly prove people wrong or something. I’m just going to crack on and do what I’m going to do.

“People can write what they want, they can have their own opinions. A lot of these things are true and are facts to people but it’s more just use them to my advantage and improve on my weaknesses, simple as that.”