Lando Norris ‘proved’ his doubters wrong on one thing with overtakes in Imola

Lando Norris recovered to second place in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix after a difficult qualifying session for the McLaren driver.

The Briton finished the race just 6.1 seconds behind winner Max Verstappen, despite a late Safety Car bringing him close to the Red Bull driver.

McLaren elected to pit Norris but didn’t with Piastri, causing them to restart on different tyres. Norris had tyres that were a lot fresher than Piastri’s, but the team didn’t instruct the Australian to move over.

Instead, Norris spent three laps getting past him, which cost him time to Verstappen. Jacques Villeneuve could not understand McLaren’s strategy, believing it would have been better to let Norris try to overtake Verstappen for the win.

Although Norris was berated for finishing outside the top three positions in qualifying, Anthony Davidson thinks the race proved something important when speaking on Sky Sports.

Lando Norris proved doubters wrong with Imola performance

Norris had to overtake Piastri and George Russell during the race to get up to second, two moves that were not easy for the Briton.

Russell put up a stern defence, but the overtake will have given him confidence after failing to do the same to Verstappen at Miami.

“Lando Norris against his own teammate, I can’t think of another time we’ve seen him have a fair fight without any team rules coming into play. Today, for his own confidence, it is a really significant point,” said Davidson.

“Yes, he was on better tyres, but it’s proved to himself, his team and doubters that he has the racing prowess and that he can get it done on other drivers than Max Verstappen at least.”

Lando Norris puts himself closer to Oscar Piastri

Norris lost the lead of the Drivers’ Championship after the Bahrain Grand Prix, after Piastri went on a run of victories.

Piastri was close to achieving a record previously set by Ayrton Senna at McLaren with four wins in a row, but his poor start enabled Verstappen to prevent the victory.

The Australian is now 13 points ahead of Norris, while Verstappen has closed the gap to 11 points off Norris in the Drivers’ Championship.

It is clear that the title battle is likely to feature all three drivers, but Verstappen could still end up leading depending on one bad race for McLaren.