“But I think I have enough experience to say, ‘don’t worry, that’s on the team – keep doing the good job, keep working to improve on your own opportunities’, but definitely we as a team have quite a lot of work to do as well.”
In terms of whether Norris can still take the fight to Verstappen in this year’s title battle, Stella added: “He can win world championships – that’s a statement that is [in] capital letters. In terms of this year’s championships, certainly we don’t give up.
“Numerically, from a drivers’ championship point of view, it looks like there’s a big gap to fill, and we are chasing Max Verstappen, so definitely he’s not going to make it easy for us.
“But we are excited to be in this position, and definitely Lando is not in this position because somebody helped him – Lando is in this position because he performs very strongly, and that’s something that we should acknowledge and realise in terms of his achievements, not only in terms of the one, two, three opportunities in a season in which he could have done better, because this is normal, and this is normal for every world champion in every season.”