Lando Norris is adamant he is unaffected by the speculation currently swirling about his McLaren future as he learns to live with the “complete BS” and “fake stories”.
McLaren’s poor start to the new F1 season has sparked a flurry of headlines about Norris who is reportedly heading to either Ferrari, Red Bull, or Mercedes.
This is despite the fact the 23-year-old Briton has a contract with the team that runs to the end of 2025.
Norris maintains such rumours are merely part of the F1 bubble and something he has to cope with.
“I’m at a point where it doesn’t affect me in any way,” said Norris when asked about the stream of stories on his future.
“I guess I’m fine with it to an extent, apart from when it’s just complete BS that people try and come up with and completely fake stories that people make up.
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“To a certain point, harsh criticism is acceptable. It makes sense. You don’t like it when it’s too much and people in the team start to get affected by it.
“Especially because maybe for some of them, they don’t understand so much or don’t know so many of the truths.
“But I think we do a good job within the team explaining things to people, telling them what’s going on, explaining my side of the story and things that go on with me, things that go on within teams.
“It’s tough, it’s the world we live in. It’s just media and what you’ve got to deal with sometimes. So, I’m fine with it, the team is fine with it.”
McLaren not in crisis – Norris
On track, the situation with McLaren is anything but fine going into this weekend’s second round of the season in Saudi Arabia.
Ahead of the opening race in Bahrain, the team made clear it had failed to hit its targets over the winter.
Whilst a below-par performance was expected, what was not anticipated was the unreliability as debutant Oscar Piastri retired after 13 laps with an electrical problem and Norris was forced to pit six times due to a power unit pneumatic problem before retiring himself with two laps remaining.
Norris, however, has dismissed any suggestion of a crisis inside McLaren at present.
“No, it is far from that,” insisted Norris.
“With Oscar’s problem, it was the first time we’ve seen that issue in years and years and years, so I’m confident that’s fixed.
“My issue, Mercedes are sure they have fixed that, and again it was something which hasn’t happened for years and years.
“So both were quite rare issues, and we’re confident, both from the HPP side and from a McLaren side, that they were fixed.
“Everyone makes it sound a lot worse than it is, and calling it a crisis is far from that at all. It’s nothing close to it.
“It was made very clear very early on that we’re far from where we want to be, and for McLaren’s expectations of who we are as a team, we’re far from where we want to be.
“But we have a very clear plan. It’s very clear from everyone back in the MTC and here what we need to achieve and want to achieve. It’s just going about setting it and achieving it, which is our next goal.”
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