Lando Norris, a 25-year-old F1 driver from the United Kingdom, has made waves in the professional racing scene since his debut in 2019. Norris’ rise has coincided with the rise of McLaren Racing, which won the Constructors’s Championship in 2024 (their first since 1998). All of this begs the question of how a 25-year-old pushing the limits in one of McLaren’s ‘weaker’ periods of car development was able to climb to the top.
Norris showed an early aptitude for the sport by competing in junior categories.
“He was just phenomenally quick,” said Stephanie Carlin, longtime trainer of Norris and current F1 business operations director. “There’s been an underlying talent and speed and pace that’s existed from the first time he got in a car.”
In 2014, after showing promise in the lower circuits, Norris’ team reached out to Zak Brown, founder of the motorsports marketing agency Just Marketing, Inc. (JMI). Despite initial reluctance, Brown arranged a meeting between Ron Dennis (then head of McLaren racing), himself, and Norris to discuss the young Brit’s future.
In 2016, Norris signed with McLaren as a Test and Simulator Driver after receiving the 2016 McLaren Autosport BRDC Award. During this time Norris competed in the European Formula 3 Championship, where he won the competition in his first attempt: this included nine victories and 11 podiums between a total of 30 races. Brown continued to help Norris climb through the ranks until 2017, when Brown replaced Dennis as the head of McLaren racing.
In 2018, Norris was promoted to a McLaren Test and Reserve Driver. In the same year, Brown paired Norris against Fernando Alonso, two-time F1 world champion, in the Daytona 24 sports car race, marking Norris’s debut in F2 racing. In his first outing, Norris set a faster lap than Alonso, which immediately put him on the map for racing fans.
Alonso announced that he would be leaving F1 in 2019, and Norris stepped up as his replacement for the season. His early career was marked by his gradual climb to the top, with numerous close races that he ended up losing. McLaren’s cars were not very competitive during this time, which added further difficulty to Norris’s ascent to the top of the sport. After narrowly missing out on a top-ten placement in his rookie year, Norris earned his maiden podium in 2020 and continued to place in the top three in the following seasons, including a race in Russia in 2021 where Norris came very close to his first win. With all of his near wins, Norris jointly holds the record for the most podium placements before a maiden win alongside Patrick Depailler, Jean Alesi, Mika Hakkinen and Eddie Irvine with 15 placements.
In 2023, Andrea Stella restructured McLaren’s engineering group, helping the team succeed at the 2023 Australian Grand Prix, a performance that established McLaren as a competitive second to the dominant engineering of Red Bull. McLaren continued to develop under Stella, and Norris continued to refine his skills and knowledge of the sport. All of this culminated in May 2024, when Norris earned his maiden win in the Miami Grand Prix, beating Red Bull’s Max Verstappen (second place) and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (third place). The win also signified McLaren’s first Grand Prix title since 2021 and McLaren’s first constructors’ title since 1998. In the same year, Norris was announced as McLaren’s senior driver.
“I’m just proud,” Norris said after the race. “A lot of people doubted me along the way. I’ve made a lot of mistakes over my last five years in my short career but today we put it altogether. This is all for the team. I stuck with McLaren because I could believe in them and do believe in them. Today, we proved exactly that.”
“I’m very happy for Lando,” four-time F1 champion and opponent Verstappen said. “It’s been a long time coming, and it’s not going to be his last one.”
Verstappen’s words became true very quickly as Norris and McLaren quickly secured three more wins in the 2024 season — a season that had originally seen a slow start from McLaren and Norris. The team ended the season with six wins, four coming from Norris.
“I made my mistakes, and I learned a lot,” Norris said about the 2024 season. “The one thing I’ve learned is probably to believe in myself a bit more.”
“Learning to be an F1 driver and learning to be a championship-contending F1 driver are two different things,” said Carlin. “And that’s what we’ve talked about, in terms of learning how to win a race first of all, and learning how to win a world championship are two completely different campaigns.”
On March 16 of this year, Norris beat Verstappen to the top of the podium at the Australian Grand Prix. He has asserted himself early as a serious contender for an F1 championship. Norris’s commitment to McLaren and both his confidence and his aptitude for improvement have paid dividends so far. Norris and his team look forward to capitalizing on the early momentum for the rest of the 2025 F1 season.
