McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella believes Lando Norris continues to improve as a driver, praising the reigning Formula 1 (F1) World Champion’s growing confidence and assertiveness following his victory at the 2026 Dutch GP. Norris secured pole position for Sunday’s race at Zandvoort after finishing third in the Sprint. He initially retained the lead before Max Verstappen’s heavy crash brought out an early red flag.
However, Kimi Antonelli took advantage of the restart to move ahead of the McLaren driver. Rather than allowing the setback to derail his race, Norris remained within contention and used an alternative tyre strategy to bring himself back into the fight. After extending his second stint, Norris closed rapidly on the cars ahead. When Antonelli attempted to challenge Lewis Hamilton, Norris capitalised, passing the Mercedes, before going on to overtake Hamilton and reclaim the lead.
From there, the Brit controlled proceedings and took his second Grand Prix victory of the 2026 season, following his win at the Hungarian GP. McLaren has since strengthened its long-term commitment to Norris, announcing a new contract that will keep him with the Woking-based team until at least the end of 2030.
Stella believes Norris is operating at World Champion level
Following the race at Zandvoort, Stella highlighted the standard Norris has reached and, more importantly, the continued development he has seen from the Brit. Rather than viewing Norris’s 2025 F1 Drivers’ Championship as the culmination of his development, the Stella believes the 26-year-old continues to become a stronger driver with every race.
“I think Lando is driving and operating at a very high level, in absolute sense, in relation to Formula 1 World Champion. I think he’s driving at the level of a World Champion and like I always say for Lando, what I like the most of his journey in Formula 1 is that he keeps improving.
“And I think especially after the start of the 2025 season, something clicked, which is not only a single click, but it’s a way of working with Lando, for Lando, and that we are also adopting on Oscar’s side now in particular. And I think this approach has led Lando to continuous improvements. So it’s almost like I see Lando stronger and stronger race by race.”
McLaren found opportunities after difficult Sprint showing
Norris’s eventual victory was far from guaranteed based on McLaren’s performance earlier in the weekend.
George Russell claimed victory in Saturday’s Sprint, with Charles Leclerc finishing second and Norris completing the podium. Stella explained that McLaren therefore focused on understanding how it could extract more performance from both the tyres and the car ahead of Sunday’s Grand Prix.
“Because I think this weekend was nowhere near a weekend in which we could fight for the victory for granted, especially after having seen the performance in the sprint. But we invested, like I said before, in trying to understand where was the opportunity from a tyre exploitation point of view and car improvement.”
The work ultimately paid off. Norris secured pole for the Grand Prix before converting his pace into victory despite losing the lead following the red-flag restart.
Norris showing greater assertiveness and self-confidence
Stella also pointed towards Norris’s move on Antonelli as evidence of a change in the McLaren driver’s approach. With Hamilton leading and Antonelli looking for a way past the Ferrari driver, Norris seized his opportunity. After Antonelli backed out of his attempted move, Norris swept around the outside to take the position before continuing his charge towards the lead.
For Stella, moments such as that demonstrate the greater assertiveness Norris now brings to his racing.
“I think, you know, if you want to look at Lando from another angle, rather than what I said before, I would say that definitely he is now expressing a higher level of acceptiveness as he drives. You know, the manoeuvre to pass Antonelli today, I think is a really good demonstration of that. He’s demonstrating more self-confidence.
“And the self-confidence, and this is interesting, and I quite like it, the self-confidence sometimes is not demonstrated by being the most aggressive. Sometimes you are self-confident when you think like, you know what, ‘I’m not going to have a fight now because I may lose in this fight. It’s a very long race. See you at the end of the race.’
“It’s this confidence in your strength that I quite like, which means that sometimes you are actually the one backing off when the situation becomes too risky, from like, I want to stay in this race.”
Assertiveness and confidence Norris’s biggest improvements
The McLaren driver did not retain the advantage he had earned from pole at Zandvoort, losing the lead to Antonelli at the restart. However, he remained composed and ultimately worked his way back to the front.
According to Stella, Norris no longer needs to force an immediate response when he loses a position. Instead, the Brit has developed the confidence to trust that opportunities will emerge over the course of a Grand Prix.
“So the self-confidence, I do see it. We need to remember that in both last couple of races that he won, he didn’t defend the pole position. He was actually second at the end of the first lap.
“But I did not hear or perceive any decay in his confidence as to the fact that he was fast and he was just preparing his opportunity to then cash in on his competitiveness. So I think assertiveness and confidence are probably the two characteristics that he has improved the most from a non-technical, non-operational point of view.”
Norris’s performances in Hungary and the F1 Dutch GP have reinforced Stella’s assessment. After securing his first F1 World Championship in 2025, the McLaren driver has continued to develop rather than simply maintaining the level that took him to the title. His new contract, which keeps him at McLaren through to at least 2030, also gives Lando Norris and the team long-term stability as they look to build on their recent success.
