Lando Norris says it means more to him to have achieved success with McLaren, the team that brought him into Formula 1.
The team go into today’s race with the chance to clinch their first constructors’ championship title since 1998 – the year before Norris was born. Norris, who arrived in F1 with McLaren in 2019, said he had options to join other race-winning teams, but wanted to be part of his first team’s return to competitiveness.“There’s been some very fun years,” he said. “True, we didn’t start off great last year, but I had some great times.
“Started off with [Carlos Sainz Jnr] and we made progress, stepped back, made progress, stepped back. Nothing ever clicked, really, and never continued to grow. It was hard just to break that barrier of getting close to Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull because for such a long period of time, they’ve been the guys who have dominated Formula 1.
“Now, not only have we broken that barrier over the last year and a half, we’ve risen to the top of it and to become the best team and leading and hopefully to go on to win.”
Norris was in contention for the drivers’ championship until the 22nd round of 24, when Max Verstappen clinched the title. He said McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella deserve more credit for the progress the team has made, given Verstappen and Red Bull’s dominance over the previous two seasons.
“I don’t think, simply from the outside, people give McLaren and my team enough credit for what they’ve done, what they’ve turned around,” he said. “It’s not an easy sport. It may look simple at times from the outside and things like that. And even I think sometimes things are more simple than what they look.
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“But to go from where we were to outdo Ferrari, who have turned things around a lot over the last couple of years, and to catch Red Bull, which I’ve said a couple of times, and Max, who one year ago dominated every race – for that to flip around so much, we can only just give a hats off to the whole team.
“A lot of things have changed. People have come and gone and Andrea has done an incredible job. So to be part of this whole story, to be part of it not long after Zak joined McLaren and started changing things and making McLaren into a slightly more happy place than it was prior. I’ve been along the journey with Zak, and we’ve gone through a lot of things together, highs and lows and emotional times.”
He scored his first grand prix win with McLaren earlier this year, in his sixth season since arriving in F1. Although he believes he might have won sooner at another team, Norris said he wanted to stay loyal to McLaren.
“It definitely has been a longer rise to get to where we are, which has been fun and I’ve really loved it and I’ve enjoyed it,” he said. “The thing I’ll be proudest and most happy about is the fact I’m still here, the fact I’m still in papaya.
“Because I believed in the team for many years. I had opportunities to not be in papaya and to maybe go on and win races at an earlier stage in my career and those kind of things. I had those opportunities, but I believed and I wanted to simply do it with McLaren.
“I wanted to do it with the guys who gave me my opportunity in Formula 1. And as much as we didn’t think it was going to be possible this year, we’re hoping for next year. Next year was our kind of in-line target, on-paper target.
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“The fact we’re doing it this year is an even bigger achievement. The job’s not done, and Andrea will be happy that I say it, but I’m proud to be on this journey, to have been on it with McLaren for so many years, and I’ll be very happy when hopefully it’s all finished off.”
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Robbie1
8th December 2024, 9:22
McLaren, winner of the first BoP title in the history of this sport.
And although I have great respect for their turnaround, it’s a turnaround with an asterisk.
SPArtacus
8th December 2024, 9:48
I’m not sure you understand what BoP is or how it works based on this comment.
MichaelN
8th December 2024, 11:10
The aero-development restrictions based on WCC position, as well as the frozen engines, have been around for a while. Winning frozen-engine seasons is kinda Red Bull’s thing.
Shame on Mercedes and Ferrari for going along with the ‘oh Honda is leaving, oh look no they’re not’ deception.
SPArtacus
8th December 2024, 15:22
Red Bull’s thing. lol
As if winning with a massive engine advantage rather than an aero advantage and chassis advantage, which is NOT frozen, is more legitimate let alone an engine that came about due to get a massive head start on everyone else. Hell, RBR won titles when they had one of the weakest engines on the grid and engines were not frozen.
anon
8th December 2024, 16:17
SPArtacus, no, Mercedes were not working on the current engine formula that much earlier than everyone else. We do know that one manufacture was doing so, because we know that Renault, when they sent their technical proposal to the FIA that set out the basic groundwork for the current regulations in early 2007, also sent technical information based on single cylinder bench tests they had carried out to evaluate the viability of their proposal.
Luca di Montezemolo liked to make those claims, but in the interview where he made those claims, he also spent much of the interview finding reasons to blame others for Ferrari being uncompetitive in the period before he was fired and attacking those in FIAT’s senior management for pushing him out of Ferrari. That claim became something of a shield for him to deflect criticism of his own performance away, since it meant he didn’t have to face so many questions about how badly Ferrari’s own technical development went and why they were having to sub-contract so much of the subsequent development work to third party specialists, who then went on to fix the design flaws in the original engine.
ppzzus (@ppzzus)
8th December 2024, 9:42
bro cant really expect us to believe this?
SPArtacus
8th December 2024, 9:47
He could have won 5 WDCs too by now, but he wanted to do it with McLaren. I’m just wondering where he could’ve won all these additional races.
BLS (@brightlampshade)
8th December 2024, 10:50
Lando Norris – The coulda woulda shoulda champion.
He’s a very fast driver, and I do quite like his personality as it is at least somewhat unique in F1. But I do feel he needs himself a mentor.
RH
8th December 2024, 10:52
If Red Bull is close next year bro is going to regret this year.
That said he put a fantastic pole lap yesterday as Verstappen left ~3 tenths on the table.
Hope he can become better at W2W.
Osnola
8th December 2024, 11:01
I do not think the bait headline represents his storyline.
But several reactions seemed to read only the headlines.
Crawliin-from-the-wreckage- Special Unhinged Edition (@davedai)
8th December 2024, 11:04
Seems you must be on the same page as Checo. He wishes to have a conversation with you about the realities of racing in F1.
Que?
That’s it good boy you’re getting it already.
MichaelN
8th December 2024, 11:14
He’s not wrong that McLaren has done very well. But they’ve ended up in that unfortunate situation where they have a car that’s good enough to win, but a team that’s not. That’s all the more problematic because the first is highly dependent on other teams, but the second can be mastered in any season.
A team that ends up having the best car – or at least a competitive car – can’t then start learning how to win races and fight for titles. It’ll be too late. As, indeed, it was this year for McLaren.
That they’re likely to take the WCC is a great result, although it has to be acknowledged that the terrible performance by Pérez and Horner’s inability handle two competitive drivers is the main reason Red Bull isn’t also leading this championship.
Mohammad Reza (@reza-pratama24)
8th December 2024, 15:46
Well after they win the WCC now, one can argue that all of the doldrums in last mid decade they were struggling were caused by Ron, and he’s the plague… Credit for Zak and Stella the Ferrari guy dressed in a Mclaren suit managed to turn things around…