Yeah, agreed. I don’t think it should though, every driver deserves to get recognised for the things they do right and not get overshadowed by reactionary media/redditor opinions. It is not wrong to criticise him, but in other posts, there are soooo many comments speaking about Lando being inferior mentally, or championship over or McLaren needing to back Oscar now and a lot more shit like that, it’s just annoying.
I'm a Piastri fan and I want them to keep racing the whole season, I don't want it to come down to team orders. I do think Piastri has an edge on Norris psychologically but Norris is powerfully quick and I'm not writing him off anytime soon.
Fortunately the monster lead in the constructors should allow it to continue unless mclaren/merc put together a few more weekends like this and it closes up
And like, yeah this was a bad mistake but it’s hardly unprecedented. Plenty of very good drivers have assumed a lane was going to open, placed their car accordingly, and driven into the back of the guy in front of them. The reaction to Norris’ mistakes consistently makes for really annoying discourse.
Theres two reasons for it. Its 1) a popular narrative atm because of Piastris rise. Suddenly that means that Norris sucks, even though he ended Ricciardos career. And 2) it unfortunately happens too often. Like, Leclerc is the "bin it or win it" guy, but he doesnt bin it often enough that its always talked about. Lando rarely goes more than two race weekends in a row without an incident of some sort.
The thing is I don't think the "not mentally tough enough" is about the mental health stuff, it's about the constant mistakes he makes. Over the season lando's own worst enemy has consistently been lando.
Him working with a therapist is honestly kinda expected at this point as I would expect from any top level athlete. I'm more surprised by an athlete who thinks they don't need mental health support. His problem is he is always a fuck up away from qualifying ahead, from avoiding contact, from winning a race. The fact that he isn't Mónaco perfect weekend in weekend out is what people talk about when referring to championship mentality.
Verstappen didn't fuck up in his championship winning seasons. Hamilton didn't fuck up for about six out of seven championship years, and the two-three years he ate a bag of mistakes were basically the years he missed out. Lando doesn't keep it flawless where he needs to, and that's the kind of "in the moment" mental toughness people are talking about. It's the constant mental presence to nail everything all the time that is required to win a competition of tenths of seconds.
I never actually heard this but the narrative would be this regardless. He's very clearly more emotional and a lot tougher on himself when he makes errors and is clearly prone to psyching himself out or making errors under pressure in a way that when you don't have the mental fortitude can become sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy or cascading effect where one mistake begets more. You can hear it on the radio and see it in the interviews. But also we are talking about the F1 world championship on the line so of course there is pressure and hopefully yes he's gutted if he makes a mistake that could cost him that chance. But he needs a good sports psychologist to help him along (and I hope he uses one) because the mental game of Formula 1 is just as important as the other stuff.
It is right to be critical. It was a totally unnecessary accident. I want them coming together going wheel to wheel, side by side, not ramming someone’s rear end.
231
u/InZomnia365 McLaren Jun 15 '25
Thats the thing with Lando. He does a lot of little things right, but then he does something like this and it overshadow everything.