Almost every Englishman had a shit Sunday after England lost to Italy in the European Football Championship, but Lando Norris, who watched on at Wembley Stadium, had an even worse time, getting mugged after the game. He said Thursday that he still isn’t 100 per cent ahead of Sunday’s British Grand Prix.
A £40,000 watch was stolen in the incident, but Norris was physically unharmed. Mentally, though, it sounds like he’s still making his way back.
“I’ve been better, I can say that,” he said Thursday, according to Formul1.com. “I’m not in perfect condition, I’m not going to lie, some work to do mentally. Of course I talk about that a lot, mental health. Mental strength is very important. I’ve not been sleeping that great and so on. So it’s not ideal and I’m feeling a bit a sore.”
The incident is a bump in the road for Norris in an otherwise stellar season, with big hopes for a good performance this weekend at the British Grand Prix. He currently sits fourth in the driver’s standings, and Norris has been racing well enough this season that there are whispers that maybe, just maybe, Lewis Hamilton isn’t the best British driver in the world anymore. If Norris finishes above Hamilton on Sunday, like he did in Austria two weeks ago, you can expect those whispers to get a little louder. Norris says that he has confidence this season that he can more than keep pace, in part because of that race in Austria.
“It was the first time I was really racing against Lewis for more than one corner like in the past,” Norris told The Guardian. “It’s a different feeling because he is the best for a reason, not just because he is quick round a track, he is good at defending and attacking. Yet I felt like I was very capable of holding him off for 15 laps.”
It is way too early to call time on Hamilton, and George Russell will also want to get in on the best British driver conversation sooner or later, too, but Norris has a chance this season to make his case. Let’s hope the mugging, in that regard, isn’t anything more than a footnote; the first practice session at Silverstone is Friday.