Norris wants to compete with Russell on the pitch at the start of the season

Lando Norris will play against his old rival George Russell early in the 2022 season as a criterion for whether McLaren is improving.

For the vast majority of their three seasons in F1 so far, Norris has been ahead of Russell because Norris has a more competitive car.

The British duo were rivals for the 2018 F2 championship, with Russell eventually beating Norris to win the championship of the season. However, after moving into F1, Norris started even higher as he was thrown straight into midfield at McLaren, while Russell was loaned to Williams and could only struggle at the end of the squad.

With the exception of Russell, who played for Lewis Hamilton at the 2020 Sakir Grand Prix, he is basically far behind Norris, but this is expected to change as he is called up to join Mercedes from this season onwards. So if Norris finds himself competing against Russell on the track, it proves that McLaren has made tremendous progress.

Norris said in an interview: "First of all, I hope we can have a round-to-round competition, if we compete round-to-round on the pitch, then I think 2022 we have a good start, or he has a bad start! I think we're going to be optimistic, hopefully we'll get off to a good start to the season and hopefully we'll be closer to Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull, especially the latter two. Time will tell, and I don't think anyone really knows where people will be at the start of the season. If I'm playing against George, then we're playing against Mercedes, and if we're playing against Mercedes, then I think we've made a huge improvement in the offseason. ”