Lando Norris eager for F1 'rewards' as quirky McLaren trait explained

Lando Norris has explained how he is eager for "F1 rewards" he got earlier in the season for his current high-level of driving. 

Norris hit a purple patch of form from the Hungarian GP to the Spanish GP in Madrid, taking pole position at the Hungaroring, at Zandvoort, and in Madrid, converting the first two into dominant victories. 

He was set for a third win in four races at the first race on the Madring after a stunning pole position, but an unfortunately timed VSC deployment meant he dropped to third place.

Since then, the MCL40 machine has proved fickle to extract performance from, with Norris being vocal about the difficulties in driving the car, which has weaknesses in slow-speed corners, on the initial corner entry, and problems with drag - in part due to shorter gear ratios - which it elected not to change in the season. 

In Mexico City, Norris equalled his best result since the third in Spain after a tough triple-header across Azerbaijan-Bahrain-Singapore, having also finished fifth in the United States - although this was largely due to a Hail Mary strategy in hoping for a safety car.

In Mexico, Norris battled with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, including wheel-barging on the final lap, but ultimately could not get past.

The outgoing world champion believes he is driving at a high level, but is simply not getting the luck he did earlier in the season, as he explained how under-driving the car could actually make it go faster.

"I still feel like I'm driving well, and I still feel like I'm putting together some of my best races that I've done," Norris reflected to media, including RacingNews365, after the Mexico City race.

"It is just that in the middle part of the year, I got rewarded for it and I could win.

"Now, if I drive just as good I'm not rewarded because the car is not as quick, or it is too easy to make mistakes.

"In a race, you're kind of forced to drive a little bit more under the limit; you cannot drive it at 101% all the time, and for some reason, [performance] seems to come back to us. 

"But it did [in Mexico]. If we look at Baku, I think we were still struggling for pace, so we need to improve the car at certain tracks and in certain areas a lot more.

"[Mexico] was good, but I'm not convinced that if we go back to the tracks we struggled at, we'd be good all of a sudden, so it suited us.

"But I don't want to rely on hope and luck for our performance, so we know what we need to improve on, and it just takes time."