Lando Norris 'sucking energy' out of those around him to ease F1 title pressure

Lando Norris has found a way to cope with the increasing pressure of this year's F1 championship showdown with McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri by 'sucking on the energy' of those closest to him.

Norris currently has momentum on his side after winning three of the last four grands prix, and has so far dominated practice for this weekend's Dutch event at Zandvoort by finishing quickest in all three sessions.

The Briton, who goes into the race trailing Piastri by nine points with 10 races remaining, has seemingly turned a corner after often chastising himself in public earlier this year for errors that were proving costly. In contrast, Piastri has kept any negative thoughts to himself.

F1 champion Jacques Villeneuve feels Norris is in a positive spiral at present. Speaking to Sky Sports F1, he said: "You often hear it said that you bring your own luck, and so on.

"It's the same thing that when you're in a positive spiral, things that could go wrong or right end up going right somehow because you put yourself in that position."

As to him currently coping with the pressure far more constructively compared to earlier in the season, he added: "One key element is, how do you suck the energy out of the people around you, so you don't sap your own? And Lando seems to be doing well at that.

"You don't do it on purpose. It happens naturally. You suck the energy out of the few people around you that you can count on, and they get tired instead of you.

"Because at some point, you will run out of energy. You need to find it somewhere, and it's not just sleeping, when you have race after race, pressure after pressure.

"And those two drivers are so different. I'm sure Piastri has doubts as well, he just doesn't voice them. So we react differently to it when we look at Lando, but every time he does that, he comes back stronger."

Villeneuve, the 1997 champion, sees nothing wrong, however, with Norris' more vocal approach to addressing mistakes compared to Piastri.

"There's nothing wrong in saying, 'Oh, I messed up there'," he said. "How do you progress? How do you make yourself better? It's understanding where you messed up and saying, 'How could I do this better?'

"It's as if he is talking to himself in a mirror. And that's easy. You say something, you listen, and say, 'Okay, that's what it means', and he seems to progress with that every time."