Norris says Piastri is “pushing me a little bit more” than Ricciardo did · RaceFans

Lando Norris says that rookie team mate Oscar Piastri is “pushing me a little bit more” than former team mate Daniel Ricciardo did over the last two seasons.

Ricciardo was signed by McLaren on a three-year deal starting in 2021 but struggled to match Norris’s performance in both 2021 and 2022, leading to McLaren cutting Ricciardo’s contract short by one season and replacing him with Alpine junior driver Piastri for 2023.

In a challenging start to the 2023 season for McLaren in which the team scored no points in the opening two rounds, the team are now fifth in the constructors’ championship on 14 points, with Norris accounting for ten and four for Piastri.

Asked ahead of the Miami Grand Prix weekend about how it feels to take the role as a senior driver of an F1 team for the first time, Norris said it was “not too different” to the dynamic of racing alongside the more experienced Ricciardo.

“I think how I worked last year and how I worked with Daniel, it’s not too different,” Norris said. “It’s not like too many things changed.

“They lean on me maybe a little bit more for the knowledge of how we were in previous years – to kind of look at the development from last year to this year and things like that.

“But apart from that you both give your sides of the feelings and the story of what’s going on with the car, what you want from the car, which aligns very well. I wouldn’t say we have the same driving style, but our comments and complaints are generally always the same. So I think that’s a good thing.”

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Piastri, who is competing in his first year in Formula 1 after winning the 2021 Formula 2 championship and spending a season as a reserve driver for Alpine, has matched Norris more closely during races than Ricciardo frequently did during their time together. Piastri was only six seconds behind his team mate at the finish of last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix and took his first career points at his home race in Melbourne.

“He’s a lovely guy – a down-to-Earth, normal guy,” said Norris. “A hard worker and so on. So it’s good fun.

“[It’s] different, I guess, to Daniel. I feel like a bit of a contrast of Australian, but still good fun. He’s very fast at the same time, so probably been pushing me a little bit more than the past couple of years. So, yeah, [it’s] enjoyable.”

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