“Just want to go have a burger and go home,” was the disconsolate entreaty from Lando Norris when he felt his Formula One world championship hopes had taken a mortal blow after he failed to finish at the Dutch Grand Prix in August. Yet it was testament to the resolution he has shown all season that while down he was far from out, as he proved in going on to claim the title that he felt had slipped away.
When Norris took the world championship with his third‑place finish in Abu Dhabi on Sunday he became the first British champion since Lewis Hamilton took his last title in 2020 and, similar to Hamilton for his first win in 2008, he had to show his absolute determination to close it out after a rollercoaster ride for the 26-year-old.
Quite apart from what has been a gruelling test of his driving ability across a season marked by intense competition, the level of emotional and psychological control that Norris has had to demonstrate must not be underestimated.
He had gone in as favourite back in Melbourne for the opening race but for great swathes of this season he has been under the cosh. He was on the back foot first to his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri, who had for so long been leading with a calm consistency that gave him the air of a world champion in waiting, and then in the late stages to an intimidating charge from that most threatening of beasts, Max Verstappen, with the bit between his teeth and nothing to lose.
A season of twists and turns had opened well for Norris, as with great verve he weathered a storm to win the Australian Grand Prix in treacherous conditions. He held his nerve like a champion and the McLaren was so quick that this writer considered their biggest headache might be how they managed their two charges. This would, in turn, come to dominate the discourse.
What followed, however, was not the narrative Norris would have liked. He was, it became clear, not as at ease with the performance characteristics of the McLaren as Piastri. Notably there was his feel for the front grip, a key part of his driving style, and it was proving particularly costly in qualifying as he attempted to adapt.
Piastri won from pole in China, Verstappen then in Japan and, in Bahrain, Norris was found wanting in what was to be a real indicator of how hard he was trying to push his car and the knife-edge it represented. He qualified poorly in a race Piastri went on to win and at the next round in Saudi Arabia worse followed: Norris crashed out in qualifying, and Piastri won again to take the championship lead for the first time.
As Norris battled, the young Australian was demonstrating all the hallmarks of a prospective champion. There was something of Alain Prost about the smooth ease and precision of his performance. He followed it with no little battling spirit to take victory from fourth on the grid in Miami.
It was not until Monaco, round eight, that Norris took his second victory, a win he enjoyed like no other. Yet what was most notable was that the McLaren team principal, Andrea Stella, was spot-on in describing it as cold‑blooded in how clinically he delivered under pressure and an indication that he had lost none of his resolve to stay in the fight as he closed to within three points of Piastri.
They were in touching distance. The McLaren chief executive, Zak Brown, had conceded early in the season that with two evenly matched drivers in a championship-winning car, on-track contact between them was more a question of when than if – and at the next round, in Canada, clash they did and Norris was at fault. Three laps from the end as they battled over fourth place, Norris hit the back of Piastri’s car attempting to pass the Australian. Norris held his hands up. “All my bad, all my fault, stupid from me,” he said.
However, what stood out at this point in conversation with Norris was how impressively he was handling the highs and lows of such a challenging season. Assessing these blows and the storm around him, he maintained a rock-like equilibrium with striking good humour. He would reiterate confidence in his own ability, a determination to eliminate errors, a belief that he could and he would. Observing at the time, it might have been possible to surmise that this was the wishful thinking so beloved of sport psychologists – but for the fact he did indeed deliver on it all.
At the next round in Austria there was a turning point. McLaren brought a major upgrade, a front‑suspension development they were hoping would give Norris the feel he required. It worked, as with a nerveless run he closed out a tightly fought battle against his teammate with superb control. Stella had praised Norris’s resilience as “typical of a champion” and he demonstrated it at the Red Bull Ring.
He and Piastri then exchanged blows, Norris taking the home victory at Silverstone he craved so much, Piastri being on top at Spa, and then Norris pulling off something of a coup with a one-stop strategy to claim victory in Hungary.
He trailed Piastri by nine points heading into that Dutch GP on 31 August. By its close, after his car gave out with seven laps to go, he was left, head bowed, alone in the dunes beside the North Sea. With Piastri winning, he was 34 points back with only nine races to go. It appeared a mountain to climb with so little between them in their cars.
Yet the next round at Monza was another gamechanger. Verstappen, who had long since declared he had abandoned any title ambitions and who was 104 points back from Piastri after the race in the Netherlands, launched his own fightback, as Red Bull finally found the balance for their car that had eluded them all season. He duly won in a race that would come to loom over Norris and McLaren.
The team’s laudable efforts to be scrupulously fair to both drivers, allowing them to race freely and according to the team’s agreed arrangements, reached a somewhat tortuous conclusion as Piastri was told to cede back to Norris the second place he had gained because of a slow pit stop for the British driver. The team had made arrangements for this scenario. Norris had nothing to do with it, but the optics were terrible and he was booed repeatedly in races that followed because of a perceived bias in his favour.
Far more significant was the next round in Azerbaijan where Piastri, still aggrieved at the Monza orders, endured his first major wobble. Dropping to last from a botched start, he went into a corner too hot in an effort to make up places, locked up and put his McLaren in the wall. The touch that was so assured for so long had deserted him just as Norris found a purple patch of form.
Norris was blunt in barging past him at the start in Singapore and, while Verstappen won again in Texas, it was Norris who claimed second before taking dominant, assured victories in Mexico, where he retook the title lead, and Brazil. In this series of four races, Piastri could manage no better than fourth.
It had been no little turnaround, unexpected perhaps by everyone except Norris himself, whose belief had not wavered. Heading into the Las Vegas GP with a 24‑point lead on Piastri and 49 on Verstappen, there was more to come. Both McLarens were disqualified in Nevada for excessive wear to the skid block and Verstappen’s win brought him to within 24 points of the lead, looming larger than ever.
With the nerves jangling and only two races remaining after their miscalculations in Vegas, closing it out was an impossibly tense affair, exacerbated as the team dropped the ball again at the penultimate round in Qatar. There McLaren were found wanting with a decision not to pit their drivers under an early safety car while the rest of the field did so, costing them the lead and then ceding the win to Verstappen. Piastri took second but Norris was only fourth and Verstappen was within 12 points, a lurking threat for an all‑or‑nothing finale.
Yet Norris was as unperturbed in the decider at Abu Dhabi as he had been in the throes of the early season travails. Confident in the abilities that had brought him so far, he was solid and nerveless, clinching it with the necessary third place to ensure he controlled his own destiny – as he had all season. He beat Verstappen to the title by just two points, but that is all that matters. He weathered the eye of the storm with a burger of solace and emerged a deserved champion.
