Lando Norris asserted himself as McLaren’s top points-scorer alongside a new, highly-rated, race-winning team mate in 2021.
Lando NorrisBeat team mate in qualifying15/22Beat team mate in race14/20Races finished21/22Laps spent ahead of team mate835/1198Qualifying margin-0.36sPoints160
So impressive was his start to the season that even past the halfway point, 12 races in, he remained third in the championship, having out-scored a Mercedes driver (Valtteri Bottas) and one of the Red Bull pair (Sergio Perez). But it was a season of two halves for Norris, and by this point things had already begun to go downhill: Having racked up 113 points in just 10 races, the remaining 12 yielded just 47. It wouldn’t be fair, however, to argue that this slump in his points-scoring accurately reflected any decline in his performance.
Over the opening three races Norris was the first driver not in a Mercedes or Red Bull to take the chequered flag every time. He did it at round five as well, and over…