Qatar Grand Prix: Lando Norris ‘relaxed’ before maiden Formula 1 title bid

At the same time, Verstappen has mounted an impressive fightback from being 104 points off the lead after the Dutch Grand Prix, the race before Italy.

Norris said: “How I am now feels the same as before Mexico when I wasn’t leading. It feels the same as Austin when I still felt good in the car, but Max still won the race.

“I really don’t feel any different in the car from before I was leading to now when I’m leading.”

Piastri has not won a race since Zandvoort at the end of August. Since then, Verstappen has won four and Norris two.

Both McLaren drivers suffered a blow when they were disqualified from the Las Vegas Grand Prix last weekend after the skid blocks on their cars were found to have worn too much.

Without that, Norris would have been coming into Qatar with a 30-point lead over Piastri, but the 26-year-old said it had not been hard to get over the disappointment of losing second place in Vegas.

“Of course it hurts,” he said. “There’s a lot of effort that goes into every weekend from everyone, including myself. All that effort just felt like it disappeared very quickly.

“But it’s the same feeling for all of us. The mechanics, the engineers, myself, everyone in McLaren, feels let down by what we had as a result. And we’re all disappointed.

“But actually I found it quite easy just to move on and have a few days off and come to this weekend. Yeah, disappointed, of course. But I was fine otherwise.”

Norris said the team would try to treat this race the same as any other.

“We treat it very normally,” he said. “There’s no point trying to treat it any differently because we’ve been doing a good job and I’m very happy with the job we’ve all been doing.

“We know what areas we need to do better, we know what things we need to improve on this year, all the standard stuff. I really try and not treat it any differently because there’s no point. Nothing needs to be treated any differently.”