Stella: “Very happy for Norris, he remained true to himself”

The words of the McLaren team principal “I won in my own way, without doing anything mean and without throwing people out”. Lando Norris proudly underlined this aspect after winning his first world title at the end of the Abu Dhabi GP. The reference may be to the treatment received a year ago by Max Verstappen in Texas and especially in Mexico. In Mexico City the Red Bull driver decided to take a penalty in order to compromise Lando Norris’s chase who, without Verstappen’s maneuvers, would probably have caught up with Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari, winner of the GP. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella highlighted how consistent the English driver was with himself: “I am particularly happy for Lando because this result repays him for a personal path that this year had a significant acceleration also following the difficulties at the beginning of the season – Stella told Sky’s microphones – our reasoning together with Lando was that a champion, an athlete must continually evolve while remaining true to himself. We must not become someone else, we must not look to others other than taking those aspects that we want to integrate with our way of to be, with our personality, with who we really are”. “Lando has evolved from a personal point of view and also from the point of view of the way in which he reacted and interacted with external stimuli, with what the media could say – he added – in the modern era, drivers, athletes, champions are subject to pressure, if anything, even more important than what happened before social media existed. So we must evolve to always be able to be the best version of ourselves even when there is this pressure.”