It wasn’t just raw emotion pouring out of Lando Norris after he was crowned the 2025 Formula 1 world champion in Abu Dhabi.
With the tears of joy came a stream of consciousness giving insight into how he had experienced his rollercoaster 2025 season – the joyous wins, the crushing defeats, the challenge of going up against cold-blooded hegemon Max Verstappen and the prospect of being usurped by his younger team-mate Oscar Piastri.
According to McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, Norris’ unsuccessful title comeback run on Verstappen in 2024 was the first key turning point: “Definitely, there was a lot that was taken away from the quest last year, even if it didn’t go to the last race. There were some learning points, like Austria, it was a tough one. I think Lando elevated his sense of: ‘I can compete with Max’.”
But following a win at the 2025 opener in Melbourne, Norris’ season soon threatened to spiral due to a lack of feel with the front of the car, causing the Briton to struggle in qualifying against Piastri. It was enough for perennial self-doubt to start creeping in again.
Alongside other work he was doing both on and off the track to tackle those questions, one way of reducing the noise was by removing the delta lap time from his dashboard in Monaco – the indication of whether he was up or down on the best lap, which he suggested was affecting him negatively. Taking a crucial pole around the Principality’s streets turned out to be one of several crucial moments of his campaign.
“I turned off my delta for the first time that weekend so I couldn’t see if I was on a better lap, worse lap, whatever it was,” Norris told the BBC in an interview the day after his title win. “For me to then to go there and put in that lap at the end of qualifying was one of the best moments of my career, because it was the time I almost doubted myself the most ever, in the most important season that it turned out to be.
“But that one lap – one minute, nine seconds – was all it needed for me to flip everything and turn that thought of ‘I just don’t know if I’ve got this’ to ‘I can definitely do this’. That was a pivotal moment for me up here [in his head].”
Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Lando Norris, McLaren, Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
The next key moment came in Canada when he misjudged an overtake on Piastri and barged into the back of him, wrecking his own race. But the grand prix also saw the introduction of a small suspension geometry tweak that, while not impacting performance, made Norris more comfortable driving on the very limit of the MCL39. It’s a change that would go on to pay off later in the year, when he took three consecutive poles in Mexico, Brazil and Las Vegas.
The next blow came in the Dutch Grand Prix when he retired from second with a fuel line problem, causing his gap to Piastri to balloon to 34 points. With how consistent and unflappable the Australian looked at the time, it felt like Mount Everest to climb.
“The people I was working with, I added more people to that group,” Norris said about his response to Piastri’s challenge. “I had to work harder both on the simulator and here at the track. I had to dig deep and try and understand more things quicker and in a more advanced way than I ever have before. I was like, ‘Oh, shoot. I’m quite a long way behind against a pretty freaking fast driver, and I’ve got to step it up’.
“I was working with more professionals in different areas to unlock more of my ability. And I think when you saw that I had that run of great results, which is ultimately what got me the championship.”
From his perspective, Stella added: “There was the start of a process which was structured, it was involving personal development, professional driving, race craft. It makes me particularly glad that Lando could capitalise on this, because this has been something that I’ve not necessarily seen many times before in terms of the amount of work, the people involved, and the rate of development.”
To his immense credit Norris – self-critical to a fault, or ‘brutally honest’ as he calls it – has always been open about any struggles and mental health challenges, often questioning if he isn’t revealing too much.
“Sometimes I get told I shouldn’t and sometimes I probably do reveal too much, and people can see vulnerabilities in that,” Norris admitted. “Maybe at times that’s a mistake. But at the same time at least I’m being truthful to my own self. If I’m doing a bad job, I tell myself I’m doing a bad job and I certainly have people around me telling me the truth.”
Lando Norris struggled to compete with Max Verstappen on his first world title attempt
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
But while that’s all admirable, you can’t win a world championship that way. You have to be a merciless assassin. A single-minded, bulletproof winning machine. Michael Schumacher, Verstappen, Ayrton Senna. Whatever it takes.
Or at least, that was the recurring belief whenever Norris’ title aspirations were up for discussion. The 26-year-old was simply deemed too soft, too touchy-feely for life at the very top of elite sport.
With his remarkable second-half recovery, from the way he bounced back from a crippling DNF at the Dutch Grand Prix all the way to coolly scything past a weaving Yuki Tsunoda in Abu Dhabi, Norris has proven the opposite is true.
“I believe I won the championship this year my way – by being a fair driver, by trying to be an honest driver,” Norris reflected. “At times, could I have been more aggressive and got off the brakes and had a few people over? I certainly could have done. Is that the way I want to go racing? Is that me? It’s not.
“I’m sure if you compare me to all the champions: have I been as aggressive as them at times? No. Have I been as daring as them at times? No. But I performed when I needed to perform to win the world championship this season. And in the end, that’s what I needed to do. I have just managed to win it the way I wanted to win it, which was not by being someone I’m not.”
One could certainly question if a 2023 or 2024-spec Norris could have done what he did since Zandvoort and the answer is probably not. But just like he had to answer the questions posed by Verstappen and Piastri to become a technically better racer and driver, he also had to find answers to the crippling questions his mind kept throwing at him. Through his toughest moments, of which there were many over the past nine months, 2025 is the year Norris truly came of age as a grand prix driver and as a person.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Steven Tee / LAT Images via Getty Images
And that doubt on whether he has what it takes to be a champion? Well, he’s gone and done it, so that can go into the bin alongside all the opportunistic criticism from the outside world, a world that still struggles to embrace openness about one’s failings and doubts as the strength that it is.
In an interview with Motorsport.com last year, driver coach and psychotherapist Simon Fitchett argued Norris’ openness was something to be applauded rather than ridiculed, and was convinced it would help him become the best version of himself.
“Having had the privilege of working with some of the drivers during my seven years in F1, I often saw those moments where they were struggling. If you learn how to manage it, it is the difference between winning and losing,” said Fitchett, who worked with the likes of Sergio Perez, David Coulthard and Jerome D’Ambrosio, and now coaches young drivers.
“But none of us are bulletproof and obviously you’re going to see some little wobbles. You really have to learn how to build up a resilience to these external distractions or things that can destabilise you, but I have huge respect for Lando for being open about it.
“For me, that shows a strength, because he’s actually acknowledged: ‘I know I’m not great at this, this and this’. But I’ll tell you what, give him another year or so and he’ll have developed huge resilience in those areas.”
Fitchett’s comments certainly seem to have aged well with today’s knowledge.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Michael Potts / LAT Images via Getty Images
Norris himself concluded: “Certainly, I made some mistakes, made some bad judgments, but how I managed to turn all of that and have the second half of the season that I had is what makes me very proud. There were doubts I had in the beginning of the year, and I proved myself wrong. The struggle in the beginning really allowed me to unlock my potential later on.
“Of course, I’ll learn from everything, moments like Montreal [where] I embarrassed myself. I wish I could go back and change some things. Plenty of moments to learn from. I feel like I’m a better driver now, certainly, than I was at the beginning of the season.
“I’ve got to do that even more next year if I want to retain what we’ve been able to achieve this year.”
Norris has truly come of age in 2025, but in doing so he hasn’t moved one inch away from who he really is. And he has been rewarded for it.
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