Sir Lewis Hamilton admits that it will be very hard for Lando Norris to beat Max Verstappen to the Formula One championship, but is hopeful the title race ‘goes down to the wire’.

Heading into this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix, Verstappen leads Norris in the standings by 70 points.

With just nine races of the season left, it seems likely that the Dutchman will win a fourth straight drivers’ title but his Red Bull is no longer the fastest car on the grid.

That would be Norris’ McLaren with the 24-year-old claiming a dominant win at last weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix.

Some have suggested that Norris could indeed mount a miraculous comeback, and while Hamilton couldn’t rule that out, he admitted his fellow Brit needs ‘some fortune’ on his side.

‘I mean, there’s a lot of points on the table, so I think it’s definitely… it’s not impossible,’ the seven-time champion told reporters at Monza.

‘I think, ultimately, Max probably only needs to finish second every race to win at this point, and he [Norris] would have to win every single race, and that still wouldn’t be enough, so then there’ll need to be some fortune in it.

Lewis Hamilton hopes his former team McLaren can beat Red Bull to the title (Photo: Getty)

‘So I think that could be really exciting, I think not only for them, but also for the sport.

‘I hope that it goes down to the wire because I think that would be great for the fans. But with their performance they showed last weekend, maybe they could.’

While Norris beating Verstappen seems far-fetched, the constructors’ battle is far closer, with Red Bull just 30 points ahead of McLaren.

With Norris and Oscar Piastri in fine form and Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez struggling, McLaren have been tipped to win their first constructors’ title since 1998.

Hamilton is the last McLaren driver to win a championship, doing so in 2008 and was part of the line-up the year prior when they scored the most points but were denied the constructors title because of the Spygate scandal.

‘What’s really exciting is I think there’s a real chance that McLaren could win the constructors title,’ the Mercedes star added.

‘I think that’s really, really exciting, because obviously I was there when we did win the last constructors’.

‘Obviously, it got taken away from us, but we won it in terms of performance that year, and I don’t think there has been one since.’