How Lando Norris put ‘quite a few demons and F1 paddock doubts to bed’

Lando Norris put “quite a few demons and F1 paddock doubts to bed” with his victory at the Monaco Grand Prix, it has been claimed.

That is the view of Sky Sports F1’s Martin Brundle, who was full of praise for Norris after he delivered a superb performance across the weekend in Monaco by claiming both pole position and the win.

Norris’s first victory at the legendary F1 race marked his second win of the campaign, and his first since the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

It has helped the Briton reduce McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri’s advantage in the world championship down to three points after the opening eight rounds.

And Brundle believes the triumph will do wonders for Norris’s confidence following a recent spell of being outperformed by Piastri, who held an 16-point championship lead after his win in Miami at the start of the month.

“It's been a tumultuous eight days for Lando Norris and his world championship chances,” Brundle wrote in his Sky column.

“He's put quite a few demons and F1 paddock doubts to bed with tremendous overtakes in Imola and a sensational pole position in Monaco under extreme pressure from Charles Leclerc, Oscar Piastri, Lewis Hamilton, and Max Verstappen. He followed this up with a largely faultless drive to victory around the streets despite plenty of chaos and challenges.

“There are now just three points between him and his McLaren team-mate Piastri as the race marks the completion of the first third of the season.”

A ‘wild weekend’ for Oscar Piastri

While Piastri has seen his championship lead cut after finishing behind Norris in back-to-back races, Brundle made a point of highlighting just how consistent the Australian has been.

Despite what Brundle described as being a “slightly wild weekend”, Piastri was able to come away with third place to limit the damage.

“Piastri had what was for him a slightly wild weekend, with a front-wing-crunching connection with the barriers at St Devote in practice, and what he described as hitting the barriers more times in one weekend than his whole career,” Brundle added.

“But the young Aussie still recorded yet another podium, which, save for one rainy corner in his backyard in Melbourne, means he would have received a trophy at every race this season. And moves his tally to 34 consecutive weekends of points scoring.”

Piastri blamed a lack of rhythm going into qualifying for the weekend “getting away” from him.

“Everything felt okay, but you’re not really pushing it to the limit in the race,” Piastri added.

“I was pretty happy with it in qualifying. I think we got there eventually. It was more just struggling to get into a rhythm before qualifying. And around here, you pay the price for not having that clean run into quali.

“So that’s where I think our weekend got away from us a little bit. But the pace was still good, just trying to get everything out of it. Every single lap was tough yesterday. And today, we tried a few things to get higher than third, but it didn’t work.”