Martin Brundle identifies two key Lando Norris flaws against ‘brutal’ Max Verstappen

Sky F1 pundit Martin Brundle believes Lando Norris’s “lack of experience” of competing for World Championships has cost him in his title battle against Max Verstappen in F1 2024.

And he fears the McLaren star “lacks the killer instinct” required to take on the “pretty brutal” Verstappen and win.

Martin Brundle questions Lando Norris’s ‘killer instinct’

Norris seemed set to take a large chunk out of Verstappen’s F1 2024 points lead in Sunday’s Brazilian Grand Prix, having stormed to an assured pole position at Interlagos as his title rival could only manage 17th on the grid.

However, Norris slid to a distant sixth in the race as Verstappen charged up the order to collect one of the most impressive victories of his F1 career.

Verstappen’s first grand prix victory since the Spanish GP on June 23 means he holds a huge 62-point advantage ahead of the final three races in Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

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With Verstappen potentially set to be crowned World Champion for the fourth time when the season resumed in Vegas later this month, Brundle is convinced that Norris – with three victories to his name in Miami, the Netherlands and Singapore – will learn a lot from his first experience of competing for major honours this season.

He told Sky Sports News: “”It’s [about improving] everything at the level he’s at.

“He’s had some amazing victories and not least in Zandvoort and Singapore where he just ran off and hid, a little bit like Max [dominates sometimes].

“But he lacks the experience of challenging for a World Championship and I think that’s a whole new set of challenges and rules – and that’s what he will learn from this year.

“Sometimes you wonder if he lacks the killer instinct up against Max, who we know can be pretty brutal in combat.

“But I think Lando will learn a lot from this season. And Max winning seven of the first 10 races pretty much put him out of reach really.”

Although McLaren have possessed the fastest car for much of this season, Norris has struggled to consistently close the gap to Verstappen.

Brundle feels that in hindsight that it was too big an ask for Norris to catch Verstappen, who started the season with seven victories from the first 10 races despite Red Bull’s waning form.

And he believes that Verstappen is now almost certain to secure a fourth consecutive crown in the coming weeks, with Norris now relying on an almost unprecedented series of events.

Put to him that Norris trailed Verstappen by 84 points at one stage in F1 2024, Brundle said: “If you add all that up together, Lando needed to take a chunk of points out of Max every single race and hope that there was his team-mate and a Ferrari or two, and even a Mercedes or two, between them.

“But one turnaround, like in Brazil, and that little escapade was over by and large unless a lot of bizarre things happen now in the final races.”

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