Battling for Formula 1 championship titles requires a lot of things. You obviously need to be fast, consistent, and you need to be able to do that across 24 races in a season. However, even if you can do that, you need the car to be fast enough to fight for wins. Luckily, Lando Norris has all of these ingredients. But Sky Sports pundit Nico Rosberg sees one more crucial component Norris might need to challenge Piastri all the way this year.
Nico Rosberg was teammates with Lewis Hamilton up until 2016 when Rosberg won the title and retired from the sport. He often mentions the mental toll the sport was having on his performance during that year. Rosberg sees the same mental issues affecting Norris during this season after small mistakes cause him to lose out to Piastri and Verstappen on track.
Nico Rosberg encourages mental training during Formula 1 seasons
During the final qualifying session in Spain last week, Nico Rosberg had quite a few things to say to Sky Sports F1 about Norris’ performance. Norris set a very strong first lap but lost out to his teammate in the final lap:
“Everything had gone perfectly. He was first until the last run, and it was just every corner a little mistake, every corner overdoing it, every corner running wide on the exit, getting a snap on the exit through the whole lap.”
Oscar Piastri Edges Teammate for Spanish GP Pole in Thrilling Qualifying
Lando Norris has been vocal about the importance of mental health in the past. He has even admitted to struggling with it himself in earlier years of his career. Despite the improvements Norris has experienced, Nico Rosberg suggests the McLaren driver could benefit from seeing a psychologist:
“I mean, wow! So what does he have to do? From my point of view, he needs to work on the mental side. We’re all spending hours and hours training our bodies, and I don’t know if Lando has a mental coach and if he works with a psychologist or not.”
“In my championship year, two hours every two days leading up to the season in the spring was huge. It was more difficult than the actual physical training. It was insanely difficult but so extremely valuable.”
Nico Rosberg’s struggles with mental stress were absolutely no secret to anyone. But neither was the fact that Norris has seen a psychologist since early in his career and up until this very day.
Lando Norris opens up on seeing a psychologist
With the current state of Formula 1 and social media, the highs are immense, and the lows can be chasms. Everything is multiplied tenfold these days. Lando Norris has never shied away from talking about his struggles with dips in performance. However, we have seen Norris be very critical of himself. He elaborates on these struggles in an interview with ESPN:
“I think I’m always working on different things. Because driving is not literally, if you just drive the car the quickest, there’s a lot of different factors that come into it. Especially when it’s a season long thing, it’s not just about one weekend.”
Lando Norris reflects on his mentality towards racing and being his own harshest critic 🧡#F1 pic.twitter.com/K50FgnI2Fs
— Formula 1 (@F1) April 28, 2025
“Some people are better than others, naturally or not naturally, even though I’ve had great weekends and things, there’s always stuff I feel like I can improve, both on the track and off the track.”
With the very competitive season ahead of Norris, it’ll be interesting to see how he deals with all sides of the sport as the championship battle comes alive.
