Andrea Stella Sees New ‘Assertiveness’ in Lando Norris After Back-to-Back Wins

Andrea Stella sees Lando Norris driving at ‘World Champion’ level and with assertiveness of whatever he wants, after securing two consecutive F1 wins in Hungary and Netherlands.

Ever since the second half of F1 2025, where he came back from a lump to secure the drivers’ world championship, McLaren’s Norris has been operating at a different level. Yes, the 2026 season start didn’t go as smoothly, especially from reliability point of view, but things are changing.

He has moved up to fourth in drivers’ standings with 159 points with victories in Hungary and Netherlands. By his own admission, he understands better now how to drive the 2026 regulations cars. It is clicking more to him. In fact, McLaren F1 chief Stella sees him driving like a World Champion.

The Italian is amazed to see how Norris has improved since the second half of F1 2025. And there is continuous cycle of improvement. Even in qualifying where he has had difficulties, he is doing much better along with being champion in low grip conditions.

That type of situation created the difference last year between him and Oscar Piastri. Stella acknowledges that they are trying to adopt similar method with the Australian to help him better his performance, which has been up and down for most since last year.

“I think Lando is driving and operating at a very high level, in absolute sense, in relation to Formula 1, like World Champion,” said Stella to media after F1 Dutch GP. “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.

“I think especially after the start of the 2025 season, something clicked, which is not only a single click, but is a way of working with Lando, for Lando, and that we are adopting also 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.

“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. And I think actually I think both drivers improved from this point of view. But, unfortunately, a question mark remains as to the behavior of the second stint of Oscar.

“So I think there’s an overall a positive trajectory for both, but at the moment Lando is capable of maximising the performance in qualifying trim, if we think the start of 2025, this had become a bit of a concern that he overcome. And then I think when you have conditions in which the cars slide in the race, there’s not much grip, then I think he is the master in this kind of conditions,” summed up Stella.

Stella acknowledged, when pressed on to see the performances of Norris from another angle, where the Brit is showing authority in taking action whether on or off track. He can certainly see that level of assertiveness in him and in particular, self-confidence.

Norris has always been the driver, who used to doubt or second guess at times – a kind of misunderstood person. Last year, a section of social media put him down against Piastri, with many joking that the Brit can only try, especially when the Australian was soaking in the wins.

They reminded him of 2024 when he couldn’t challenge Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. But it has certainly changed for good now as Stella asserts. “I think, if we want to look at Lando from another angle, rather than what I said before, I would say that definitely he’s now expressing a higher level of assertiveness as he drives,” the Italian continued.

“The maneuver to pass Antonelli in Zandvoort, I think, is a good, 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 demonstrating by being the most aggressive.” He notes how Norris is now deciding when to put up a fight against his F1 rival.

Stella points out that Norris knows when to fight. He doesn’t hesitate to back off at one point, only to charge back up at the right moment. He highlights how his confidence never got affected even though he lost out to his rivals at the start of the grand prix.

“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,” said Stella. “It’s a very long race. See you at the end of the race’. It’s this confidence in your means, 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.’

“So, the self-confidence, I do see it, and 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,” summed up Stella, who also talked about what is troubling Norris’ teammate Piastri, who had an average time at Zandvoort.