McLaren driver Lando Norris has claimed that nothing “special” is required to beat Max Verstappen ahead of a potential F1 2025 rematch.

Norris enjoyed the most successful season of his F1 career last year, collecting his maiden victory in Miami and adding three further wins in the Netherlands, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

Lando Norris sets out F1 2025 plan to tackle Max Verstappen

The British driver’s fourth and final victory of the season helped secure McLaren’s first Constructors’ title since 1998.

However, despite having the quickest car for much of the season Norris fell 63 points short of Verstappen, who overcame a 10-race winless run to claim a fourth consecutive Drivers’ crown.

Norris was criticised for a perceived weakness in wheel-to-wheel battle with Verstappen, who was hit with two 10-second penalties for separate clashes with the McLaren man in Mexico.

McLaren became the first team to reveal their new car for the F1 2025 season on Thursday, with Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri behind the wheel for a shakedown test at Silverstone.

Speaking after the outing, Norris acknowledged the need to get his “elbow out” against Verstappen in F1 2025.

Yet he insisted that nothing “special” is required to best the Red Bull driver, stressing the need to be “smart” against his rival.

According to Sky F1, he said: “I need to get my elbows out and I need to show him that I’m not going to willingly give him any positions, those kind of things.

“But I also have to be a smart driver. You have to be a smart driver to go up against Max. We saw it last year.

“I look forward to [more battles with Verstappen]. I like those moments when you have to make those quick decisions.

“It’s always a lot harder when you’re in the car than when you rewatch it after. Even when I see some things that I do, I’m like: ‘What the hell have I done? What an idiot.’

“But at the same time, I want to say that I don’t need to go out and just prove something to him.

“I don’t need to take any unnecessary risks and don’t need to go down trying necessarily. I just keep focusing on myself.

“I don’t think you have to do anything special to try and beat Max.

“He’s quick, he’s aggressive, he’s one of the best ever.

“The easy way is just going out and being a bit quicker than him and staying ahead. That’s the obvious plan.

“You’ve just got to be smart. That’s the answer to it all.

“You have to be smart and you have to position the car well and also think of the long game sometimes.”

Norris admitted that he “just didn’t do a good enough job” at some rounds last season and wasn’t operating at the level required to overcome Verstappen.

And he returned to the events of Mexico 2024, claiming that Verstappen “very willingly sacrificed” himself at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez by taking two penalties to ensure Norris was denied the win.

He explained: “I want to race against Max and I do enjoy those moments. Some things obviously didn’t end up in the perfect way, in the perfect scenario.

“I think coming from the points deficit that I [had in 2024], even though the majority of the time we were quicker, and I had a better car for a lot of the races, I can happily admit there were some things where I just didn’t do a good enough job.

“I wasn’t simply quite at the level that I need to be to race against Max.

“But when we’re talking about that, we’re talking about probably going up against one of the hardest attacking-defence guys you can ever go up against.

“I don’t want to go through all these things again, but like we saw in Mexico, very willingly sacrificed himself for the benefit of the overall outcome.

“And when that’s the mentality of a driver, whether it’s Max or any driver, that’s a very difficult one to ever come on top of when you’re 50 or 40 points behind in the championship, because it’s never going to be a win for me.

“So what’s the main thing that’s going to change this year? I just need more points from the beginning and hopefully it’s the other way around.

“Being in his position you can always see as the vulnerable position. And me being the chaser and the guy trying to attack can also be seen as a positive and negative.

“But with how he drives and the risks that he takes and the aggressiveness that he has, there was almost no way that I could come back from the deficit that I had, because there would have been too many scenarios that replicated Mexico or replicated Red Bull Ring where we were both out in the way.

“That probably benefited him more than it did me.”

Norris’s comments come after Verstappen offered a rare insight into his racing philosophy at the end of last year, confessing that he is prepared to “cross a line” on occasion in his pursuit of the “maximum result.”

He told Viaplay: “I will always get the maximum out of it.

“Sometimes you have to cross a line and I’ll do that. I will do everything to get the maximum result out of it for a championship.

“And, of course, yes, sometimes you have to be on the limit, over the limit.

“You have to calculate all that, and not everyone understands that. Not everyone has that mentality.”

Verstappen went on to defend his aggressive approach against Norris in Mexico, insisting that he did not regret the collisions “at all” despite finishing sixth on the day.

Speaking at the end of 2024, McLaren chief executive Zak Brown declared that Norris “now knows exactly how to deal with Max on track” as a result of racing against the Red Bull driver in 2024.

He said: “I think Lando has learned how to fight against Max.

“Because Max has been very open about how he drives. If you try to overtake him on the outside, he won’t let you.

“But Lando gave him a great fight in Mexico and also made sure that there was no clash between the two of them. We were fighting for the Constructors‘ title and we couldn’t afford to be too aggressive.

“So Lando did the right thing and I think he knows exactly how to deal with Max on the track.

“I am convinced that he will perform differently next year.”