Lando Norris sees a route to glory without team-mate Oscar Piastri suffering

Lando Norris insists he does not need to rely on Oscar Piastri being struck down by misfortune to win the world championship.

The British driver has been cast 34 points behind his McLaren team-mate with nine rounds and 249 points remaining after he retired from last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix with an engine failure.

Norris’s DNF in Zandvoort puts him firmly on the back foot to beat Piastri to his maiden world crown. With McLaren the class of field, reliability problems for Piastri could be Norris’ best route back into the fight.

But speaking in Monza on Thursday, Norris said: “I can still win the championship without anything happening (to Piastri) and that’s the way I wish to do it.

“It would certainly make my life easier if there were some more drivers in between us every now and then, but we’re so dominant as a team, that almost makes my life harder.

“That’s really the most frustrating part of it all. But may the best man win, may the best driver win. If that’s the case at the end of the season (and Piastri wins) then I’ll respect that.”

Norris was on course to finish second to Piastri in Zandvoort before his engine blew in the closing stages.

Piastri has won seven times, two more than Norris, but the Englishman is the only one of the McLaren drivers to have had a race derailed by technical gremlins this season.

But he continued: “It’s just something that happens. It’s not (team principal) Andrea (Stella) or (McLaren CEO) Zak (Brown’s) fault. We were on the back of 60 or so races without a technical failure. And that is something we were pretty proud about.

“So for that to happen, that’s just unlucky, and it wasn’t a bad job done by anyone. The team apologised to me because they felt as though they have let me down. The same way I apologise to them if I feel like I have let them down.

“But that is life, you cannot do anything about it, and if I lose the championship by those points, then I just have to take it on the chin, move on and hold my head high and try and do it again next year. I cannot dwell on it.”