After winning the 2021 Italian Grand Prix – where Norris was second behind then team-mate Daniel Ricciardo – and finishing fourth in the constructors’ championship that year after being third in 2020 following considerable rebuilding effort, McLaren slipped back to fifth in 2022.
Its slide initially continued into 2023, where Norris and new team-mate Oscar Piastri struggled to get the MCL60 out of Q1 early on, before a much-vaunted upgrade programme delivered impressive gains that catapulted McLaren up the order.
It eventually reached a position where it was Red Bull’s closest challenger for much of the second half of the season.
Stella, appointed team principal after Andreas Seidl left to run Sauber ahead of Audi’s entry in 2026 late last year, has gained many plaudits for McLaren’s turnaround so far on his watch, but the Italian himself is keen to highlight Norris’s role in the orange team’s gains.
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This was particularly because McLaren’s current lack of race-winning potential meant Norris has had to watch the rivals he grew up racing, such as George Russell, or his first F1 team-mate, Carlos Sainz, become race winners in the meantime.
“Lando is in a phase of his career which he kind of feels the pressure of: ‘I want to win a race, I want to be there with the guys that I know I’m as good as and I see them winning races’,” Stella told Autosport in an exclusive interview.
“I can really understand, the team can really understand the kind of stress that this can create.
Source: Autosport