'Mentality, approach & preparation have improved'

Lando Norris says he owes his return to the lead of the world championship to improved consistency in the past couple of months.

The Briton, 25, reclaimed the lead from McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri by one point following a dominant victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

That built on a run of five races since early September, all of which Norris has finished ahead of the Australian.

"Mentality has improved, approach has improved, preparation has improved," Norris said.

"But also consistency. It's not like I've won the last six or seven races, but I've been consistently out there and consistently scoring points.

"That's actually the thing that's given me the biggest boost over the last few weeks."

Norris has gained 35 points on Piastri since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, which Piastri won while Norris retired with a fuel-line failure.

That result made Piastri a strong title favourite, especially in the context of his consistency through the season up to that point. Norris is still one victory short of Piastri's tally of six this season so far.

But Norris rejected the idea that he had started taking more risks since that race because he felt he had nothing to lose.

"Maybe in qualifying you think: 'Well, may as well just go for it.' But it's not like every approach, every lap I do is, 'I've got nothing to lose here, let's try a bit more.' That's certainly not true," he said.

"I definitely wouldn't put it down to that. I would put it more down to just having worked hard and having a very good team around me. I'd put 99% of it down to that, 1% a mix of various different things. But most results coming from work done rather than mentality or things."

And he said he was not thinking about the fact that he was leading the championship for the first time since the fourth race of the season, unless other people brought it up with him.

"I don't think in terms of races and achieving the actual dream of being a champion, I still at the minute don't feel any difference. I think nothing's completed, nothing's done," he said.

"There's still, what, over 120 points or something available, so it doesn't mean anything still for the time being. It's a nice thought, again, to look on and think about, but otherwise it's nice to be there, but to win next weekend and win the final race, that's still my goal."

This weekend's Sao Paulo Grand Prix is the first of a run of four races in five weekends that will bring the season to a close.

Piastri goes into it after two difficult weekends at the US and Mexico City Grands Prix where he struggled for pace.

"The last couple of weekends have been a little bit more tricky, but we've got pretty clear answers on why that's the case," he said.

"There's not really too many mysteries on what's happened. There's questions on why some differences have popped up in terms of how you drive and stuff like that, but everything is explainable.

"Part of the struggle the last couple of weekends is what has been working for the majority of the season wasn't working very well.

"But trying to now know what I need to do is just about going out and doing it whereas I think the last couple of weekends it wasn't always obvious what I needed to change exactly.

"So from that side of things we could have the same situation here, we could have the same in Vegas for example, but I feel like now I'm much better prepared for whatever kind of conditions we get."

The McLaren drivers still face a threat from Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who is 36 points off the lead after a strong run of results that have seen him win three times and take a second and third in the past five grands prix.

That has reduced the Dutchman's deficit to the leader from 104 points.

Verstappen said: "For me, there's no pressure. Even if I don't win it, I still know that I drove in a really good season.

"To still be talking about being in this fight is already remarkable in the first place. For sure, it has to do with the turnaround of the team. They never gave up and that's the strength of the team. Nevertheless, when you're over 100 points behind and then still we're talking about being in this fight, I think it's very impressive."

But the four-time champion emphasised that he was still very much the underdog in the title fight.

"To the end with four races, it's still a pretty big gap," Verstappen said. "I need to score a lot more points (than them) every single weekend, which is not that straightforward.

"It comes down to us optimising everything and nailing the weekend. And besides that, probably, we need a little bit of luck on one round to create a bigger offset. But we're going to give it all. And if that's going to be enough at the end of the year, I don't know.

"But there's also not much to lose. I mean, worst case we have P3 and best case you can win a championship.

"There is an opportunity, of course, that we can win it, so we are going for it all in."