Guenther Steiner has backed Lando Norris to overtake George Russell for second place in the 2026 Formula 1 drivers’ championship.
Following the inaugural Spanish Grand Prix at the Madring circuit, Norris sits fourth in the drivers’ standings with 186 points. Mercedes’ Russell is second with 211 points, and his team-mate Kimi Antonelli currently leads with 292 points.
Speaking on The Red Flags Podcast, the former Haas team principal argued that the 2025 champion has the performance to close the gap to Russell and ultimately overtake him before the season ends.
“He will be second if he continues like this,” Steiner said. “Look how happy the Lando boy is.”
After a tricky start to the season for McLaren, the Woking outfit introduced upgrades that contributed to back-to-back wins for Norris at the Hungarian and Dutch Grands Prix. He then finished fourth at the Italian Grand Prix.
Norris suddenly found himself in the championship conversation following the two grand prix victories. While speaking to Sky Sports after announcing his contract extension with McLaren until the end of 2030, the 26-year-old discussed the team’s potential in the current season.
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Sutton Images via Getty Images
“The team is working better than they’ve ever worked before,” Norris said. “I think they’re working in a more efficient, harder way, even than the last couple of years. And that level was world championship-winning level. So, it’s not that I don’t think we can win it.
“I’m confident we have a lot of what we need in place. It’s just certain areas on the car that we need to improve. And I believe we can. It’s just a race against time, as always, within Formula 1. But we proved over the last few weekends that we can still win races, and we have very good momentum.
“I always want that little bit more, and I want to be confident that we can improve the car enough to easily say, ‘Yeah, we can fight for this world championship.’
“So, we can easily fight as a team. We just need to improve some things with the car, and I’m still confident we can do that.”
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