Read time: 15.2 minutes

Sometimes in F1, relationships click so well that a driver’s success remains forever linked to the team with which it was achieved.

That’s the way it is with Britain’s newly crowned 11th World Champion, Lando Norris, and McLaren. Their synergy defines everything and is what has overcome all the difficult times that have led to the great moments.

An all-too familiar F1 expression these days is ‘win as a team, lose as a team’. On the surface, it may appear cliche, but it is the crucial crux around which the whole thing revolves. Of course, the driver is the end user, the figure upon whom everyone else relies to achieve not only his dream, but a dream that has become theirs. Or perhaps it is the other way around, that their dream has become his. Either way, the two are so intrinsically linked that each faction knows that they rely totally upon the other, that they simply cannot succeed without that mutual bond. It is the closest of links, almost as sanctified as marriage.

Lando’s dream began the moment he sat, aged eight, in the kart his father Adam had bought him and then started driving it as fast as it would go. And when, as a pint-sized youngster already carving his insouciant way up the ranks, he would gaze lovingly at the Chrome-finished McLaren F1 cars helmed in 2007 by double World Champion Fernando Alonso and rookie F3 and GP2 Champion Lewis Hamilton. One day, he told himself, even back then, he too would drive one of them.

His journey to F1 really started to gain momentum when, in 2016, he was selected as a candidate for the McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year. An award run by the British Racing Drivers Club to seek out the next most promising racer, to whom it would offer financial support and career advice.

By that stage, he had won the direct-drive Karting World Championship in 2014 and graduated to racing Ginetta sportscars. In 2015, he won the MSA Formula Championship with Carlin Motorsport and followed up with the Toyota Racing Series, Formula Renault Eurocup, and Formula Renault NEC titles in 2016.

The BRDC scheme gave drivers laps in a variety of cars. Laps in a potent Mercedes DTM car were part of the programme, and works driver Maximilian Gotz set a bogey time on new tyres for the contenders to be compared against. Initially, at 16, Lando was deemed too young and too small for that part, but eventually was allowed out as the final runner. He went 1.2s faster than Gotz. Gotz then demanded a fresh set of tyres and went out to beat that time, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t…

Yesterday, a little kid's dream came true 🥺✨#McLaren pic.twitter.com/FbuBAIIgnt

— McLaren (@McLarenF1) December 8, 2025

McLaren, the team he had grown up watching, gave him a run in our simulator, and following this, Zak Brown, who had been appointed as McLaren’s Executive Director the previous November, signed him to our Driver Development Programme. As Zak says, “I think it was Sir Alex Ferguson who talked often about signing players for their character as well as their talent, and I’m a big believer in that.”

Lando soon proved “a shining example of the worth of that policy.” In his early days, he was quite happy integrating himself at the factory in Woking, visiting all the various departments, but also making tea or sweeping floors. Several famous photos depict founder Bruce McLaren doing the exact same thing.

Zak tells the amusing story of a track day at Paul Ricard in 2016 with his Ferrari 430 Challenge. At that stage, the team had been in talks with Lando, but nothing had been signed. Daniel Ricciardo, Mika Häkkinen and David Coulthard were all invited to the event and they took Lando along. “That Ferrari was the first proper racing sportscar that Lando ever drove. It was first time he could drive a big boy car because he was still under 17, and he spent half a day driving it.”

Brought up in a loving family, Lando has always been an approachable, impeccably mannered character. McLaren took to his personality immediately, and what he did on track spoke for itself. In his first season in the Driver Development Programme in 2017, he won the Formula 3 European Championship with Carlin. In his second season, he won the opening race in the Formula 2 Championship in 2018 before finishing second overall to George Russell.

His success in F3 and F2 earned him F1 opportunities, including a first test in Hungary in August 2017, while he continued to use his role as the Simulator and Test Driver to build key relationships within the F1 team. He made his F1 race weekend debut in FP1 at the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix – it was the first of seven FP1 appearances that year, as the team prepared him to make the step up full-time.

Formula 1 beckoned, and for 2019, he joined Carlos Sainz and made his Grand Prix debut in Australia. The pair struck up an immediate bond, becoming affectionately known as ‘Carlando’. Together, they represented a new-look McLaren. His fanbase grew as it emerged that he would stay behind to help the team pack down each weekend, while his fame skyrocketed upon the release of Netflix’s Drive to Survive series, which provided another, more in-depth look at his off-track personality.

In the first race of his second season, he won his first podium in Austria, prompting hysterical scenes in the garage. Lando, insisting to the team that he wasn’t crying, said over team radio: “Awesome job, boys, I am so happy. Cheeky boys. Thanks for all of the hard work. Let’s keep it going. It’s going to be tough, but I am proud of you all.”

He became famous for his radio messages across his early years, which exhibited his close bond with the team. These included singing Happy Birthday to his Race Engineer Will Joseph’s mum, who had promised to bake him a cake if he got onto the podium in Imola, and his emotional goodbye to Andrew Jarvis, his Performance Engineer (who has since returned).

When Sainz departed for Ferrari and was replaced by experienced F1 Grand Prix race winner Daniel Ricciardo, Lando took another step up, taking four podiums in 2024, including a strong second to Daniel when he won the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, McLaren’s first win since Jenson Button’s triumph in Brazil in 2012.

One race later, his own success seemed imminent as he comfortably headed Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and seemed set for his first Grand Prix win, before an agonisingly timed downpour denied him.

The closer he came, the more those at McLaren willed him on. He racked up an impressive number of podiums - he closed in on and overtook Nick Heidfeld for the unwanted record of most podiums without a victory (15) – but no one at McLaren ever doubted he’d eventually become a Grand Prix winner, they were desperate to make it happen.

When Daniel departed at the end of 2022, and was replaced by Oscar, Lando became the team’s elder driver for the first time in his career. He was excited to take on the extra responsibility, but didn’t see a need to change his approach, while he also embraced the challenge of having a quick, young rookie alongside him, with Oscar stepping up as the only driver to win Formula 2 and Formula 3 back-to-back.

Andrea, newly installed as McLaren’s Team Principal, warned in the lead-up to the opening round that the start of the season would be tough, but promised that key updates would deliver performance. When these arrived mid-season in 2023, they transformed the MCL60 beyond anyone’s wildest predictions.

Every driver dreams of such a moment, of finding themselves in a great car, and Lando recognised immediately what he had beneath him the moment he first put the revised machine through its paces. His journey to the World Championship had just taken its most important step. But it was far from easy or straightforward. Though the car was undeniably fast, it remained a step away from victory. 

2024 delivered that breakthrough. After a relatively slow start to the season, a crucial upgrade introduced ahead of the Miami Grand Prix powered him to a maiden victory, fulfilling the promise Zak and others had seen in him years earlier.

There had been a period when sections of the media questioned whether Lando had outgrown the team, as his development appeared to be outpacing the car beneath him. Yet he repeatedly spoke of “wanting to win with McLaren”, insisting that success here would mean far more than winning elsewhere. By committing his future via a new contract ahead of 2024, he showed immense faith in the project, and victory in Miami was emphatic proof that his belief had been justified.

As 10 more wins have followed, he’s continued to handle himself and his car with the confidence, smoothness and grace that have been his hallmarks throughout his career, and he’s pushed Max Verstappen throughout.

Resilient and determined, as Lando has matured into an established front runner, he has needed to learn, alongside McLaren, and often the hard way, how to win. They have worked it out together. For Lando in F1, it was a new process, and likewise for a team whose personnel had changed dramatically since their last World Championship. This only intensified their relationship.

While in 2024 the MCL38’s race-winning capabilities arrived too late to challenge for the Drivers’ Championship, McLaren emerged as the quickest team from the start in 2025. The lessons they had learnt in 2024 and the experience of winning the Constructors’ Championship in a dramatic season finale would come into play.

Lando delivered in key moments, achieving two of his dream victories, around the streets of Monaco and in front of his home crowd at the British Grand Prix, but there were difficult times too, and he trailed Oscar by 34 points heading into the final nine rounds, following a mechanical failure in the Dutch Grand Prix.

Always one to wear his heart on his sleeve, Lando spoke openly about the tougher periods, while continuing to work relentlessly behind the scenes with both the McLaren team and his trusted inner circle to overcome them. His self-deprecation, a trait that has endeared him to fans and media alike and helped forge strong relationships within the team, is also a tool he uses to drive his own improvement.

That period of introspection culminated in a defining ‘lock-in’ phase, as he overturned the deficit to claim the title by two points. Fittingly, it was also during this period that he became McLaren’s most experienced driver, surpassing David Coulthard’s record of 150 GP starts in Qatar. It was the most consistent period of his career to date, and a powerful demonstration of resilience.

In and outside the paddock, it was a hugely popular achievement.

And what he said in the joyous aftermath provided a fascinating insight into that inner Lando, as he spoke of his Race Engineer, Will Joseph, his Performance Engineer, Andrew Jarvis, and his other McLaren team-mates. There’s a tight bond, which has grown over the years and provided the cornerstone for his Championship challenge.

“This is not my World Championship, this is ours. I feel proud, but I don't feel proud because I'm going to wake up tomorrow and go 'I beat everyone', and I'm not proud because I get to just say ‘I'm a World Champion.’

"I'm proud because I just feel like I made a lot of other people happy, like Will and Andrew. They don't get to see their families much. They've seen me grow up more than they've seen their own kids grow up. I feel bad about that. But the fact that they put so much effort into making me perform and helping us all perform, I get to make them feel like their time has been hopefully a little bit worth it. That's what makes me so happy."