Lando Norris reveals alarming health issues from the new generation of cars that are starting to have an adverse effect 

Lando Norris has revealed that the new generation of cars have had an adverse effect on his back.

The British driver revealed last season that he has been forced to spend a lot of time working on stretching and treating his back after racing because of the stiff suspension of these cars. The new generation of cars were introduced last season and are built on ground effect philosophy.

As a result, the suspensions have to be much stiffer in these cars, which makes them a menace to ride over kerbs and bumps. Even last season a number of drivers, like Lewis Hamilton, Daniel Ricciardo and others, complained about the issue and how the cars were causing intense pain to the back.

Lando Norris revealed recently that he was also facing the same issues. Detailing how it had affected his day-to-day life, the Mclaren driver said (as quoted by PlanetF1):

“A lot of things have already been put in place. I made a couple of new seats already. It was worse last year than it is this year. Almost every year until last year, I could get away with just hopping in the car and not doing any physio."

"Not the best thing, I always did it but I could get away with it. Now I have to do it. I have to stretch, I have to do all these things, morning and evening, before every session. If I don’t, then I always struggle a lot more with my back."

He added:

“It’s not just racing, it is just other things. It’s just something that I’ve had to work on in general anyway, but it’s definitely not helped by some of the changes on the car over the last couple of years. It got to quite a bad point last year, a pretty bad point: every day I was struggling, struggling with sleep and everything, just in constant pain."

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As soon as I do a track walk, I struggle a lot: Lando Norris

Explaining the extent of the back pain issue induced by the new cars, Lando Norris revealed how he now struggles to even do track walks.

While he did admit that the issues have decreased since last season, he said it remains a significant problem. He said:

“Even track walks. As soon as I do a track walk, I struggle a lot, so I’ve had to cut down on track walks, little things that maybe I didn’t realize but have helped me quite a bit just to get into a better position and struggle a lot less because I was struggling a lot every day, every night with quite a bit of pain."

He added:

"But I’m in a much better position now so I’ve done some of my own stuff and done some stuff with the team and the seating and stuff like that."

Lando Norris has certainly kicked off an interesting debate, one that needs to be had in F1 because cars should not physically hurt drivers. The drivers need to speak out more and this is something that needs to be addressed.