Lando Norris doubted he would have won the 2024 Formula 1 title even with a perfect season, but was nevertheless proud of McLaren for putting himself in contention this season.

Norris’ dwindling chances of a title ended at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after he had to beat Max Verstappen by three points to take the battle to the next round in Qatar.

Red Bull driver Verstappen finished fifth ahead of Norris to complete his title defense as the Briton struggled over the race distance with front graining, although a late switch to softs helped him take the fastest lap point.

Norris believed it had been a major achievement for McLaren to climb the rankings into regular victory contention, but said that even with perfection in every race, Verstappen would still have been too difficult to beat during the season.

“I’m very proud of the whole team for keeping up the fight for so long, for starting to catch up and overtake as much as we did. We were the fourth best team at the beginning of the year,” said Norris. .

“Red Bull has never been the fourth best team or the worst team, let’s say, ever. We were too far behind to catch up from the start of the season, and we couldn’t because they were too strong.

“Next year we will go into the season with a car that we think we can win a championship with from the first round, and we haven’t been able to do that in the last six years, so I’m excited about that.

But I am proud of what we have achieved. My first win in Formula 1, my first three (wins), no one else is fighting him. It’s been me and it’s been McLaren.

“Could we have done some things better? Absolutely. Do I think that even with a perfect season we could have won the championship? I don’t. So I’m happy to come second.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Yuki Tsunoda, RB F1 Team VCARB 01

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

With McLaren now focused on securing the constructors’ title, Norris said he was more concerned about the difficult run McLaren faced in Vegas than he was satisfied that Mercedes had helped soften the damage for Ferrari with the 1 -2 finish.

He also felt that the race showed that McLaren was defying the popular belief that it had the best car in F1 and could get nothing more out of it.

“I don’t think about those things (Mercedes beating Ferrari), I think about how bad our car was today. That’s what worries me, not that Mercedes is strong. It was how poor we’ve been all weekend.

“It is clear that we have a lot of work to do on our car. It’s too hard to drive. It doesn’t work in these conditions.

“It doesn’t work at many other tracks where we’ve had similar conditions, but we’ve been able to get the most out of it at times, even when people think we’ve had the best car, but that’s absolutely not the case.

“We still won some of those races, and those were great weekends. But this weekend, even though I feel like I rode pretty well, I couldn’t get anything out of it, and if I tried I would probably end up somewhere in the wall.”