‘He should start doing comedy’ - Lando Norris refutes Max Verstappen claim

Lando Norris joked Max Verstappen should “start doing comedy” as he refuted his F1 rival’s claim that he would have won the world championship for McLaren.

After clinching his fourth consecutive world championship in Las Vegas last weekend, Verstappen asserted he would have also taken the title had he been driving Norris’s McLaren - and much sooner. 

Red Bull started the season in dominant fashion but McLaren have been the team to beat for much of the year. Despite that, Verstappen’s eight wins are five more than what Norris has racked up for McLaren.

“He should start doing comedy or something,” Norris told media including Crash.net at the Qatar Grand Prix. “He can say whatever he wants.

“Of course, I completely disagree, as I would. He’s good, but, yeah, it’s not true.”

McLaren are bidding to win their first constructors’ world title since 1998 and are 24 points clear of Ferrari in the standings with two races remaining.

Red Bull are 53 points back, largely due to Sergio Perez’s continued struggles alongside Verstappen, who has been responsible for a whopping 403 points of the 555 Red Bull have scored this year.

After being pushed hard by Oscar Piastri, Norris said there are “pros and cons” to having a teammate who provides competition.

“There’s pros but he has to do all his work on his own, which is hats off to him,” Norris said.

“He doesn’t have someone who’s pushing him, he doesn’t have someone who’s trying other things with the car and you can’t do A to B tests and things like that, because the data’s not as valuable when you don’t have someone performing at the same level.

“There’s a lot of things that Max can do that are phenomenal, driving at the level he does consistently without a teammate that can push him in any way certainly doesn’t makes his life harder from that perspective, or from a team perspective.

“But at the same time there is no pressure, he doesn’t have to deal with trying to beat someone in his own team and that comes with some comfort. But they go together and in some ways I like having a bit of pressure because it makes me do a better job.

“I’m sure he’s going to say he doesn’t care, whoever his teammate is he doesn’t mind. There’s pros and cons of having a string teammate and I hope at some point he has one that can challenge him a bit more.”

Norris added that Red Bull would have won the constructors’ championship “if they had two drivers as good as Max”.