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They say it takes 10 years of hard work to become an overnight sensation. For Lando, you could argue it’s been nearer 15, as he’s risen through the ranks to become a Formula 1 Grand Prix winner.

From national karting recognition in 2008, through to his recent exploits at the pinnacle of motorsport. There are many milestones along the way, both personal and professional, but all critical to levelling-up and taking that next step towards the top.  

Following on from his historic and heroic Miami Grand Prix win, we’ve charted his rise from karting sensation to becoming one of the best drivers on the planet. This is Lando Norris' road to victory... 

1. Sweeping the board: Five titles in three years 

Despite spanning the globe, motorsport is a village. Everybody knows everybody else, everybody talks over the back fence, and thus Lando was tapped as one to watch long before he came to public prominence. His karting record was stellar: Formula Kart Stars MiniMax champion in 2012, then 2013 CIK-FIA KFJ European champion, CIK-FIA KFJ International Super Cup champion, WSK Euro Series KFJ champion. In 2014, at the age of 14, he made history by becoming the youngest CIK-FIA KF World Champion (taking that particular accolade from Lewis Hamilton).  

In 2014, Lando paired his karting programme with a successful season in the Ginetta Junior Championship, and then in 2015, he made the leap into single-seaters. He won his first race with Carlin in the MSA Formula (Formula 4) Championship and went on to take the title, then in 2016, added the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0, Formula Renault 2.0 NEC and Toyota Racing Series titles. For 2017, he went with Carlin into Formula 3.  

Lando again won the first race of the season in FIA Formula 3, and took the title by a comfortable margin… but that hadn’t been pre-ordained. Sticking with Carlin, rather than going with one of the powerhouse F3 teams had been a gamble. “It wasn’t clear-cut, as they hadn’t had the best time in F3,” recalls Lando. “But I was with Carlin in F4, and it was all about confidence: I knew everyone and felt very much at home. We had to work extra hard and play catch-up. In terms of work ethic from everyone, it was a huge step-up, but in the end, it paid off.” 

2. Becoming a McLaren Junior 

Lando’s successes in the junior categories made him quite the hot property, and we won the race to land his signature before his victorious F3 campaign began. With Stoffel Vandoorne moving up a race seat, Lando slipped in to fill a vacancy in the junior ranks, becoming our Test and Simulator driver. Lando says he chose McLaren because of the good feeling he got walking into the MTC… And the team were very pleased that he did.  

“I regard Lando as a fabulous prospect - he blew the doors off his rivals in not one but three highly competitive race series last year,” said CEO Zak Brown. “We'll be developing him this year as part of our simulator team, whereby he'll be contributing directly and importantly to our Formula 1 campaign at the same time as honing and improving his technical feedback capabilities." 

Lando did spend an awful lot of 2017 in a darkened simulator – but he was allowed out, blinking in the Hungarian sunshine, to have his first F1 test in August, shortly before the summer break. It was a big moment – and he stepped up, better with every run, ending the test looking like he drove an F1 car every week. 

“The test in Budapest was very important, my first real feeling for an F1 car… to see what I’m able to do in a car that I want to drive in the future,” said Lando on reflection. “It went very well, better than I expected, and they gave me a lot of confidence to look forward to it in the future. Actually, it was awesome!” 

3. The final steps  

2018 was a busy year for Lando. He moved up to a full F2 programme and assumed responsibilities as McLaren’s official Test and Reserve driver – though his first racing action of the year was a dip of the toe into endurance racing, partnering with Phil Hanson and Fernando Alonso in a United Autosports entry at the 24 Hours of Daytona. The list of drivers that impress Fernando isn’t extensive, but he returned from Florida with an unusually high opinion of his new apprentice.  

Lando’s year in F2 got off to a great start with victory the first time out – again – winning the Feature Race in Bahrain. It was to be his only victory of a campaign in which he finished second – though arguably, he achieved the bigger goal of being confirmed in a McLaren race seat for 2019 before the F2 season had concluded.  

The Formula 2 Class of ’18 is the high-water mark for the formulae. George Russell, Lando and Alex Albon finished one-two-three – but Lando really didn’t get the rub. Clutch issues in the single-make championship dogged the season, and Lando seemed to lose that lottery more often than most. Nevertheless, he hammered out a string of podiums, the best of which was P2 on a soaking wet day at the Hungaroring. He was peerless in the conditions and looked like he was driving on a different surface to everyone else – only to be cruelly denied by a mechanical issue. 

He didn’t have time to dwell on that, however, with two days in the F1 car at the traditional post-Hungarian Grand Prix test. Across two days, he put in a mighty 180 laps and was announced shortly after for an FP1 drive at the Belgian Grand Prix, stepping into Fernando’s car (so, y’know, no pressure).  

Lando had already driven the MCL33 at the in-season test in Barcelona, and he’d been a presence in the garage all season, so it didn’t feel that strange to see him jump in for a session. Lando had another go at Monza the following week and was announced as a 2019 race driver the day after the Italian Grand Prix. He continued to appear in FP1 sessions for much of the remainder of the season, and finished his campaign with 136 laps in the Yas Marina post-season test, ready for the next step…  

4. Becoming a full-time Formula 1 race driver  

The relationship between McLaren’s drivers for 2019 took care of itself. In Carlos Sainz, the team had secured the services of a talented driver coming into the prime of his career. In Lando, it had an exciting young rookie with excellent junior pedigree… and a lot to learn. This was fantastic news for Lando: while every rookie is saddled with a huge burden of expectation, he at least had expectations firmly under control: there was no requirement to beat his more experienced team-mate, but he’d get the plaudits whenever he did.  

It helped both drivers that the team was on the up, the MCL34 was performing well, and they had a happy atmosphere in which to work. Lando scored our first points of the season with sixth place at the second round in Bahrain and, while Carlos out-performed him across the season, Lando did more than enough to keep Carlos honest. The team finished the year fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, our best result in seven seasons.  

Significantly, although it was Sainz that scored a late-season podium, by those end-of-season races, the gap between the drivers had become paper-thin. It boded well for 2020. Having two drivers separated by very little can lead to an atmosphere in the garage that’s a little… fraught, but Carlos and Lando handled it better than most and took genuine pleasure in each other’s successes (while obviously vowing swift and pitiless vengeance, like all good racing drivers should).  

Lando landed the first blow. When the season finally got underway, at a deserted Red Bull Ring, he finished on the podium, thanks to an incredible final stint and a dramatic last lap that had the team in the garage off the edge of their seats, as he closed a time gap to grab third place by less than two-tenths of a second. It was his first podium – and first fastest-lap – in F1. With the drivers spurring each other on, the team finished third in the Constructors’ Championship. 

5. Becoming the team’s senior driver  

It’s been a long time since McLaren had a home-grown senior driver in the car, but going into his fifth season of F1, Lando assumed that mantle. His feedback tends to be crisp and assertive – sometimes really quite brutal – capable of discriminating between what he would like and what he thinks the car needs.  

In a 2023 season of regular upgrades and limited practice, it proved a key factor in the development battle and has continued to do so in 2024, with our first upgrade installed on the MCL38 ahead of Lando’s victory in Miami.

From outside the car, it has been clear for some time now that Lando’s shouldering a bigger burden. The signs of it were clear across 2021 and ’22, when Daniel Ricciardo was struggling to get on terms with a difficult car, but it was more obvious in 2023 with a rookie team-mate alongside him. 

Lando insisted it was more a function of time, than any big changes within his mindset. “Our car hasn’t changed too much over the last couple of years, so it’s a little bit of me repeating myself,” he says. “I don’t need to ramble on and say a lot of things because the team knows me well. We’ve got to a point where they’ll understand what I say because they know how I drive and what I mean. So, I tend to concentrate on just saying the important stuff – you want to be as clear and concise as possible.  

“Of course, it helps to be a bit more experienced but primarily it’s that we’re taking little steps all the time, so I don’t need to say a lot. I’ll say what I need to say, but that’s it. Simplicity is the key!”  

Lando lends weight to the message with his performances on track. His driving style is very calm, capable of looking after his tyres, delaying gratification and doing what he needs to do (while also indulging in a few radio gripes if it isn’t rocking his world). He tends to be his own harshest critic – but increasingly, he’s finishing races saying, “I think we got everything out of that.”  

It's taken him to the brink of victory many times. While his nearest miss was the 2021 Russian Grand Prix, where only an agonisingly-timed downpour denied him, he also racked up an impressive number of podiums. Worryingly so, in fact, as he closed in on and overtook Nick Heidfeld for the unwanted record of most podiums without a victory (15). Not that it ever fazed him, victory felt like a matter of time - it was a case of 'when', not 'if'. 

While McLaren were a top-of-the-midfield team in Lando’s early years, those podiums were by nature opportunistic – but in the second half of 2023, when the MCL60 started showing some real pace, Lando began collecting trophies entirely on merit and that has continued into 2024, with one in Australia and one in China.

Ever since his home podium at the British Grand Prix in 2023, the direction of travel within the team made it inevitable that he’d get to this point, a Grand Prix winner.  

An overnight sensation 15 years in the making.