Andreas Seidl heaped praise on Lando Norris despite the Brit's results suffering from McLaren's performance struggles during the 2022 season.
It proved to be a more difficult year for the team than many expected. Given their progress in recent years they were hotly tipped to comfortably finish fourth in the standings, with some more optimistic predictions even suggesting they might have been able to trouble the 'big three'.
But that was not the case. They started the season almost entirely uncompetitive and produced a record of inconsistent results throughout the rest of it. In the end, their struggles to regularly score big points saw them finish fifth in the standings behind Alpine.
In the context of the team's difficulties, Norris is still considered to have had another good year. Once again he was 'best of the rest' as seventh in the drivers' standings – he does hate that phrase, though – and the only racer not representing Red Bull, Mercedes or Ferrari to stand on a podium.
Even away from results themselves, McLaren team principal Seidl believes Norris has developed and matured into a better all-around driver. "There were different things which were impressing me quite a lot," he said of the young Brit.
"Obviously, in terms of pure performance inside the car, even if it's not so visible in terms of results, because we simply were not that competitive compared to last year. He clearly made another step.
"If I see how he's approaching the weekends, how he's pulling off the qualifying sessions, how he's pulling off the races – it's just impressive, knowing that he's only in his fourth year in in Formula 1. Obviously, at the same time, [this] is giving us a quite optimistic outlook because we know there's still a lot more to come and we know we still have him on board for many, many more years, which is great to know.
"Outside of the car, it was quite impressive how he was dealing with these challenges also of being part of the team this year, where it was a bit more challenging compared to the last three years where we always made these steps forward and could score some great results.
"Last year he was very important for me as well, especially at the beginning of the season when we had this difficult start, to make sure he helped me also leading the team, staying positive, and keeping motivating everyone within the team in order to fight back as quickly as possible. [I'm] just happy to have him on board for many more years."
