Lando Norris “wasn’t very confident” before first F1 season

Norris finished his rookie season in F1 11th in the championship, three points behinds SportPesa Racing Point’s Sergio Perez, as he and Carlos Sainz helped McLaren to a P4 constructors finish.
 
The Briton scored 47 less points than Sainz but was hit with reliability issues whilst in points positions, notably Belgium when he was in fifth on the last lap before retiring, but beat his teammate 11-10 in their qualifying battle.

 “I think I can be very happy from how the whole season has gone from myself and from the team,” Norris said as quoted by Crash.net.

“Coming into the season, I wasn’t very confident with how I was going to do, so I’m happy I kind of proved myself wrong and have done a good job and been able to give myself more confidence and improved as a driver.

“I’m very happy about that. I got some good results. There’s still a lot of things I need to improve on but on the whole I’m very happy.”

One of Norris’ biggest doubts was be capable of going up against drivers that had been in F1 for several years, worrying about not doing a good enough job but felt better about it after the first couple of races.

“If I was going to be good enough, as simple as that,” Norris said of his doubts.

“I didn’t know if I was going to be quick enough going up against a driver whose done four years in F1 in McLaren and just in F1 against so many good drivers, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do a good enough job every time.

“I just didn’t believe in myself much but already after Australia and Bahrain, I already gained a lot of confidence. It was simply not knowing if I was going to be able to keep up.”