McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insists the “natural speed” of the prodigiously gifted Norris is comparab🐈le to the two icons of the sport, who have nine championships between them.

Norris enters this weekend’s F1 Mexico City Grand Prix in fine form, stringing together four podium finishes as McL✤aren established themselves as Red Bull’s closest contenders.

ꦑ“I think the ingredients for Lando to be able to succeed, like these drivers have been able to succeed, are coming together,” Stella told the . 

“When it is a﷽bout 𝓀natural speed, I think Lando can compete with some of these big names like Schumacher or Fernando Alonso.

“The real success factor is in making the race craft bigger and bigger, creating as꧂ much as possible adaptability, because you're never going to have the perfect car. You're never going to have the perf😼ect situation. It can happen.

“W💃e want to succeed even when there's a 50/50 probability to do that, then you want to make the difference through your continuous improvement, adaptability, understanding the situation better than your competitors, and gaining a competitive advantage.

“Definitely Lando is on a very strong path from this point of view, and I think the evidence is that as soon as we gave him a car 🐎that was able to compete for pod⛦iums, he just achieved it.

“He's clearly there. I think if anything, it’s more on us now to give him the machinery to be able ꦍto capitalise on his own qualities.”

Stella identified Norris’ key attributes: “First of all, Lando gives you the charact⛎eristic, like some other top drivers that I was lucky enough to work with, that their perception of time is zoomed in very much.

“He talks about what happens in half a second like it happened in one hour. The capacity to perceive and isolate all the 𝔍little things that happen from his point of view as a driver, or from what's happening with the car, is pretty impressiv🎃e.”