When Lando Norris was first introduced to McLaren’s boss, the meeting did not go positively.
That was a decade ago. Ron Dennis had led McLaren since 1981, guiding its evolution into one of the most successful Formula One teams in history. He’d worked with legends including Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Mika Hakkinen and Lewis Hamilton, all of whom had won world championships in McLaren cars.
He knew what greatness looked like. And Dennis did not see it in Norris.
Zak Brown, the CEO of McLaren Racing, recalled that meeting in his recent autobiography. “Ron isn’t sure that Lando has what it takes to make it in F1,” he wrote. “He is relatively small in stature, and there are concerns that perhaps he is not going to develop the necessary muscles and strength to make it at the very highest level.”
But now, in 2025, Norris has not only reached the highest level, but on Sunday in Abu Dhabi, he reached the motorsport summit by becoming F1 world champion for the first time, finishing third in a race where he just needed to finish on the podium to clinch.
Norris is McLaren’s first drivers’ champion since Hamilton in 2008. At 26, he is the seventh-youngest world champion in F1 history, younger than greats like Niki Lauda, Jim Clark and Kimi Räikkonen when they achieved the same feat.
His place within F1’s history books is secure.
But becoming world champion is unlikely to catapult Norris to a totally new level of fame. He’s already there.
Since making his F1 debut in 2019, aged just 19, he has become one of F1’s most recognizable faces and one of the stars of Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive. Norris has already graced the pages of Vogue, Vanity Fair and GQ — his reach going far beyond motorsport’s traditional confines.
But the F1 title marks the realization of a lifelong goal for Norris, who just 18 months ago was still yet to win his first grand prix. It was a drought that’d sparked unfair nicknames, such as “Lando No Wins,” and inevitably raised questions about one of the most vaunted talents of recent times.
Norris emerged on the radar as a future star in the early 2010s, through his success in go-karting, winning pretty much every championship he entered. In 2014, he became the youngest world champion in the CIK-FIA KF category, beating the record set by Hamilton.
It was easy to hype Norris as “the next Hamilton” at a time when the British great was starting his run of title wins with Mercedes. But had Norris pursued his first love in motorsport, he may have enjoyed success on two wheels instead of four.
Motorcycle racing captured Norris’ attention as a child, making him an ardent fan of Valentino Rossi, MotoGP’s nine-time world champion.
Rossi’s fun approach to racing was one Norris always hoped to emulate. It’s why he uses bright fluorescent colors for his helmet designs. But cars would be Norris’ route, after his elder brother, Oliver, also raced go-karts to a high level.
There was a big difference between Norris’ rise and that of Hamilton: his level of financial support.
The stories of Hamilton’s father, Anthony, working several jobs to keep his son karting are well known, and McLaren’s support was critical in helping Hamilton reach F1. Norris’ father, Adam, made his fortune as a pension manager and was named on The Sunday Times Rich List in 2022, with an estimated worth of over $228 million (£200 million).
Norris went to the prestigious Millfield School in Somerset, and his family’s wealth meant he could benefit from extra on-track testing and the best support as he started out in racing. That inevitably gave him an advantage over many of his rivals.
But that still had to be paired with a natural ability on the race track, which quickly shone through as Norris moved up to car racing.
He spent 2014 in the Ginetta Junior championship, an introductory sportscar racing series, alongside his karting commitments, before going full time in single-seaters the following year with Carlin, one of the best-known British junior teams.
Its founder, Trevor Carlin, told The Athletic in an interview in 2023 that the perfect situation for such squads was finding “a driver that’s really good, and has money as well,” which he called a “Norris-type scenario.” It would also prevent drivers from committing too early to any big F1 academy programs out of necessity.
“He is just supremely talented, and kept his independence so he could pick and choose which F1 team he went to,” Carlin said. “That’s the magic sauce, when they’ve got the money and the talent.”
That “magic sauce” fueled Norris to great success as a junior. He won the national MSA Formula (Formula Four) series in the UK in 2015, before taking two European Formula Renault titles the following year, as well as a winter series championship in New Zealand.
Lando Norris prepares for an F2 race in late 2017.Sam Bloxham / Formula 1 / Getty Images
Ahead of his move to F3 in 2017, F1 teams were already circling.
McLaren then announced in February 2017 that Norris had joined its academy. Brown had worked with Norris’ management since 2014 and had been named McLaren’s new executive director in December 2016, after Dennis was forced out by his fellow shareholders.
Brown’s arrival would spark a decade of change for McLaren, which went from lackluster results on the track and financial struggles off it to sweeping this year’s F1 titles and becoming worth more than $4 billion. The driver Dennis was unsure of has long been a key part of McLaren.
In 2017, Norris eased to the European F3 title — a series not even Max Verstappen won on his way to F1, a path that for the Dutchman was notably shorter than most other drivers — but a bigger moment came that summer.
This was when Norris took part in his first F1 tests for McLaren. He’d already impressed in a private test run in a 2011 McLaren at Portimao in Portugal, but the team threw Norris into the spotlight by giving the 17-year-old the nod for the 2017 mid-season test F1 used to hold in Hungary.
The 2017 MCL32 car had yielded little joy for then McLaren drivers Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne, but for Norris, it was a first real chance to embed himself with McLaren’s race team and to show what he could do with top-level racing machinery.
Will Joseph, who has been Norris’ race engineer throughout his F1 career, recalled their first meeting in that Hungary test in an interview with McLaren’s website in August 2024.
“I remember him being incredibly small, incredibly young, and fairly quiet,” Joseph said. “But keen to get involved and get on with it.” Norris ended the test second-fastest, two-tenths behind Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.
It confirmed Brown’s confidence in Norris, which grew as he moved up to F2 — the final step before F1 — for 2018.
Brown had also brokered a deal for Norris to take part in the Rolex 24 at Daytona that January, where he shared a car with Alonso and impressed with his pace alongside the two-time F1 world champion.
By the summer, with Alonso opting to quit F1 and Vandoorne also on his way out after another miserable year for McLaren, Norris was front of the queue to step up.
Norris learned he’d be racing in F1 from 2019 after the Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where he’d taken part in practice. He was packing up his things and reaching for a bag of sweets when Brown delivered the news to the then-18-year-old.
Alongside the incoming Carlos Sainz, Norris would form part of a new era for McLaren — going from serving coffee to Alonso to taking his place in the papaya cars.
As exciting as the step up was, Norris knew McLaren’s impatience with underperformance, even from young drivers. Vandoorne, once tipped to be the team’s first world champion since Hamilton, lasted just two seasons and didn’t finish a race higher than seventh. Kevin Magnussen and Sergio Pérez each spent just a year at McLaren before being dropped.
Norris was asked if he was worried about going the same way. “No,” Norris replied, “because… I’m better!” His quiet delivery and smile softened it to a joke, yet it was a sign of his underlying confidence.
The Norris who spoke with the British reporters for that media session in late 2018 is different from the Norris of today.
Joseph noted his quiet demeanor from their first meeting, and in his book, Brown recalled Norris being “a very shy kid.” Ahead of his 2018 F2 season, Norris even needed prompting by his press officer to recall his best races in front of a group of journalists at McLaren’s F1 factory.
Now that much older and wiser, Norris seems perfectly at ease with the media and full of confidence in what he says. He may still be an introvert at heart, but few would now describe him as shy.
Reaching F1 gave Norris the chance to make good on his desire to emulate Rossi and enjoy himself at the highest level.
Throughout his rookie season, he and Sainz struck up a strong friendship, while Norris also grew his profile off the track by forming his own gaming company, Quadrant, and regularly streaming online.
As the new Gen Z audience began flocking to F1 following Netflix docuseries ‘Drive to Survive,’ Norris gained many new fans. His openness about struggles with mental health also showed a level of vulnerability that is rare among F1 drivers. Again, this endeared him to fans.
Norris matched that popularity with strong performances on the track.
Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz became firm friends after they were paired together at McLaren for the 2019 F1 season.Charles Coates / Getty Images
He was a regular points scorer through his rookie season, as McLaren recovered to fourth in the 2019 championship, its best finish in seven years. He then took another step in the Covid-delayed 2020 season by scoring his first podium at the opening round in Austria.
Norris ended 2020 only eight points behind Sainz, who’d secured a move to Ferrari and would be replaced by Daniel Ricciardo, an eight-time grand prix winner who McLaren had long coveted, for 2021.
Yet it was Norris who emerged as the clear team leader, even if he had to settle for second when Ricciardo scored McLaren’s first win for nine years at Monza in 2021. His first pole arrived at the next race in Sochi, and Norris was in control of the race, only for a late rain shower to deny him a maiden victory.
It was clear to McLaren that, for all of Ricciardo’s star power, Norris was the future.
It locked him into a new long-term contract in February 2022 and jettisoned Ricciardo in favor of another Australian, Oscar Piastri, for 2023. After qualifying 11th and finishing last, two laps down on the winner, at the opening race in Bahrain, Norris was braced for a long, difficult season that year.
But it would, in fact, be the start of McLaren’s revival.What You Should Read NextHow McLaren, F1 champions again after 26 years, went from last to first in 18 monthsLed by talented drivers and a serene team principal, McLaren rapidly grew into the champion it has so longed to become again.
By mid-season, and with Andrea Stella now at the helm as team principal, McLaren’s car upgrades gave Norris and Piastri the chance to compete at the front properly.
Norris led a chunk of his home race at Silverstone and became a podium regular through 2023’s second half. But he was yet to win a grand prix, setting a new record for the most podium finishes in F1 without standing on the top step when he made his 107th F1 start at the 2024 Australian GP.
In a period dominated by Verstappen and Red Bull, the chances to break that drought were rare.
In an interview with The Athletic in Japan in 2024, he identified 2025 as a year where McLaren should be fighting to win races. “My time’s coming,” Norris said. “I’m chill about it. I’m happy.”
His time would actually come three weeks later in 2024 in Miami, when he scored his first race win after some perfect safety car timing and searing pace on the restart that helped him beat Verstappen. Norris celebrated by partying with his McLaren team through the night.
Because it was the team that had shown belief in Norris from day one, he’d returned that feeling, even if this was occasionally challenged. “There are times when you do question everything,” Norris told The Athletic in an interview last week in Las Vegas.
“I’m sure Zak questioned things, Andrea questioned things. But you’ve always got to believe. I think we all believed.” Sticking it out through the hard times gave his success greater meaning at McLaren.
The Miami win ignited Norris’ 2024 season and gave rise to fleeting thoughts of a championship challenge, as Verstappen and Red Bull stumbled.
Despite dominant victories in the Netherlands and Singapore, winning last season was always a long shot, but it did give Norris the first chance to properly fight Verstappen wheel-to-wheel and get a taste of the Dutchman’s no-holds-barred approach to racing.
Norris fell short in 2024, but his fourth and final win of the year in Abu Dhabi helped McLaren clinch its first constructors’ title in 26 years, ahead of Ferrari.
“Thank you so much, it’s been a special year,” Norris said after crossing the line. “Next year is gonna be my year too.”
That vow was matched by Norris’ billing as 2025’s preseason championship favorite, given McLaren’s surge through 2023-2024.
A win through a wet race in Australia was a perfect start, but Norris started to struggle with his braking on the upgraded McLaren car, especially maximizing his pace over a single lap.
Lando Norris on his way to winning the 2025 Australian GP for McLaren.Pauline Ballet / Formula 1 / Getty Images
Emotional wins at Monaco and Silverstone meant a lot, but after Norris’ engine failed in the closing stages of the Dutch GP at Zandvoort while he was running second, a 34-point gap to Piastri suddenly looked hard to overcome.What You Should Read NextHow Lando Norris proved his growth with high-pressure Australian Grand Prix winThis time 12 months ago, the Australian Grand Prix was the sort of race that Lando Norris and McLaren may have lost
But it would prove to be the turning point in Norris’ year. From the following race at Monza onwards, Norris had the upper hand on Piastri.
Crucially, Norris hit his stride after regaining his confidence with the MCL39.
Commanding wins in Mexico and Brazil vaulted him back into the points lead, and although McLaren’s Las Vegas double disqualification took away some breathing space, Norris arrived in Abu Dhabi with the championship within reach.
His late-season run set up a dramatic title-deciding finale in Abu Dhabi. And, there, under the lights, the man they once called ‘Lando No-Wins’ kept his nerve to finish third and etch his name into F1 history as world champion.
As Norris promised, 2025 would be his year, one where he’d achieve that lifelong dream. And it has also justified all his faith in McLaren to make it a reality.
