How F1 champ Lando Norris aims to defend title in Abu Dhabi

Amid the championship battle between Mercedes and Ferrari at this season’s Formula 1, one man is quietly going about his business and flying under the radar while doing it.

It’s not easy to do that when you are the reigning world champion but with most of the attention focused on the current championship leader Kimi Antonelli of Mercedes and his closest challengers in teammate George Russell and Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, McLaren’s Lando Norris is slowly making his way up the ladder with back-to-back wins in Budapest and Zandvoort.

Currently at 159 points, 83 adrift of Antonelli, the Briton sits in fourth place with the kind of deficit that Red Bull’s Max Verstappen nearly erased last season, as the McLaren driver clinched his first championship by just two points in Abu Dhabi.

The good news for Norris is that the championship battle looks to be going down to the wire again, with the season finale at the Yas Marina Circuit now confirmed. Yet, despite his resurgence, the 26-year-old believes he doesn't yet have a car capable of vying for the Formula 1 title and yet could "win every race" remaining this season if McLaren manages to solve its biggest vulnerability.

"I know I've just won two races in a row and had two poles in a row, but at the minute I don't have the car I need to fight for a championship," Norris said after the Dutch Grand Prix. He added that the right changes to target McLaren's troubles in slow-speed corners could set him up to chase down Antonelli.

"We're very, very strong in high-speed (corners), and that's the place we've improved the car the most ... No one matches us in high speed, and that's a good thing," Norris said.

However, Norris added that "Mercedes' advantage that they have to us in slow speed is also crazy."

Norris urged McLaren not to get "complacent" and to focus on improving how the car handles in low-speed corners to unlock its full potential.

"If we can improve on these slow speeds, I'm confident that I can win every race this season. If we don't, then it's much more difficult to believe so," he said.

According to McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, Norris is now more confident than ever on the track and he's getting better at picking his moment to strike. The highlight of Norris' race was an audacious overtaking move around the outside of Antonelli, reacting fast to the Italian's own failed attempt to pass Hamilton.

Norris' confidence shines through in a willingness to wait for the best chance to win, rather than rushing, Stella said.

"The self-confidence sometimes is not demonstrated by being the most aggressive," Stella noted. "In both the 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. I did not hear or perceive any decay in his confidence as to the fact that he was fast. He was just preparing his opportunity and then cashing in on his competitiveness."

Norris said he was improving on track but credited his Dutch GP win to smart work with the team to fix the car's setup after he failed to match Mercedes for pace in Saturday's sprint.

That "is a perfect example of the work we put in overnight transformed our race and gave me the opportunity to win," he said. "The work we put in away from the track is certainly a huge part of that."