McLaren has taken a major step with a recent string of upgrades for the MCL60, and in both Britain and Hungary Norris led the chase of Red Bull and earned back-to-back second places.
He acknowledges that the team can now expect to challenge for the top three on pure performance rather than having to wait for unusual circumstances to create a chance.
“I think the majority of the time we've had an opportunity to be somewhere or achieve something we've been able to do it,” he said. “And therefore I'm happy with it.
“It's just adjusting to the new reality of it, which I think we've done well as a team. It's easy to get a bit overexcited now we're fighting for podiums all of a sudden, when we haven't for a long time, and we definitely haven't consecutively.
“It’s more like halfway through the race we're like, 'Oh my God, we're going to get on the podium here,’ rather than starting P2 and aiming for a podium.
“It is quite a different story that you're in. But it was treated very well. The mechanics, the engineers, everyone. So I think everyone adjusted well to that.”
Norris expects McLaren to bounce back at this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix after the “outlier” difficult Belgian GP ahead of the summer break.
His team-mate Oscar Piastri finished second in the rain-affected sprint in Belgium. However in the main race Norris could not better seventh as McLaren lost out to cars from the Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin teams.
“I think obviously Spa was not a bad one for us still,” he said. “We just didn't have a race car, we had more of a qualifying car. But even the race car was not bad when we were in clean air.
“It just wasn't a raceable car, I think is the way of saying it. I got overtaken every single lap because we were so slow on the straights.
Source: Autosport