How Norris achieved his lifetime’s ambition by ‘winning it my way’

The adrenaline beginning to drain out of him, but the euphoria of winning a first world title still very much present, Lando Norris was in reflective mood as he discussed what his first Formula 1 drivers’ title meant to him.

“I just won it my way,” the McLaren driver said. “I’m happy I could go out and be myself.”

“I feel like I have just managed to win it the way I wanted to win it, which was not by being someone I’m not. Not trying to be as aggressive as Max [Verstappen] or as forceful as other champions might have been in the past – whatever it may be. My style of just trying to be a good person and a good team member.”

The 26-year-old Briton did a lot of talking after climbing out of his car in Abu Dhabi, where his third-place finish in the 2025 season finale ensured he beat Verstappen to the championship by just two points. That is the way of things in F1, where drivers have to finish their media commitments before getting down to the business of celebrating their success.

It has not been easy. There have been bumps in the road. Some even feel Red Bull’s Verstappen would have been a more worthy champion, given the scale of his comeback in the final third of the season.

While Verstappen mounted one of the all-time great comebacks from the start of September, Norris weathered an early rough patch, and rode his own concurrent wave of momentum to achieve his lifetime’s ambition in a race that, while tense, it always felt like he had it under control.

After he celebrated on the podium, where he was drenched in champagne by race-winner Verstappen and McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri, as the three title contenders finished at the front just as they had started the race, you could almost feel Norris coming to terms with his achievement in real time as he discussed how he had got to where he had.

There were some very touching comments about how much it meant to him to make so many people who were important to him happy, especially his parents and his colleagues at McLaren.

“I feel proud but not because I’m going to wake up tomorrow and go, ‘I beat everyone,'” he said. “I’m not proud because I get to just say I’m a world champion. I’m proud because I feel like I made a lot of other people happy.”

And as he talked, he began to open up on who he is, his honesty, his determination to be true to himself and his wish to be open about his feelings, even the difficult ones, a trait for which he has been criticised from time to time.

“Could I have gone out and been more of that person you probably want me to be at times? I could have done,” he said.

Norris started the season as favourite, after McLaren’s strong end to 2024, but after winning the first race, he went through a rough patch and Piastri moved into a comfortable lead.

Norris was not at one with the car, was finding it difficult to feel the front axle when he was trying to take it to the limit in qualifying. That led to mistakes – even a big crash in Saudi Arabia – and when you start behind in modern F1, you tend to finish there.

But he and McLaren worked at it. The team came up with a tweak to the front suspension aimed at improving feel. It was a small thing. It made a small difference, but a barely perceptible one.

From there, he slowly improved, began to build momentum, but it was more about the work he was putting in behind the scenes.

He knew what he needed to be better at, and he worked on it, on adapting to the car, on not being alarmed that it felt slightly different from what he wanted.

It was a mental approach as much as a change in driving, and slowly it began to make a difference.

“It started after I had that kind of bad run in race two, three, four, five, six, that kind of area,” he said. “Or certainly when it was like, ‘All right, my way is not working. I’ve got to understand things differently. I’ve got to speak to more people. I’ve got to understand what I’m thinking, why I’m thinking it. Why am I doing this? Why am I getting tense in qualifying? Why am I making the decisions that I’m making?’ Whatever it may be.

“Certainly, the bad run of results and lack of performance – not speed, because I think the speed’s always there – but lack of putting things together when I had the capability of putting things together, allowed or opened up the doors to go and understand: “OK, I need to do more than just try again next weekend. I need to try and understand things on a deeper level.

He was 34 points adrift of Piastri after the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, with only nine races remaining. That was when the run of form that ultimately took him to the title started.

But while the outside perception was that this had freed Norris up and allowed him to just go for it, he says it was the opposite.

“No, it didn’t allow me to relax,” he said. “Thirty-four points against a guy who had the same car, who was doing an incredible job, who I know is incredibly great, it didn’t fill me with confidence and (make me) think I have nothing to lose now.

“I just had to step up, what I was doing away from the track, the people I was working with. I had to involve people to that group, I had to work harder, I was on a simulator, I had to change my approaches, I had to change my style of driving, I had to dig deep, to unlock more of my ideas.

“I’m trying to understand more things quicker, in a more advanced way than I ever have before.”

Team principal Andrea Stella said: “The level of Formula 1 drivers nowadays is so high, to compete at this level, the only way to stay in the quest is to keep evolving continuously.

“If I look at Lando, definitely there was a lot that was taken away from the quest last year, even if it didn’t go to the last race. I think Lando elevated his sense of, almost his status, like, ‘I can compete with Max.’

“This season there was another important turning point, which is the way Lando, and we talk specifically about him for a moment, responded to the difficulties we had at the start of the season. There was the start of a process which was structured, it was holistic, it was involving the personal development, professional, driving, racecraft.

“It makes me particularly glad that Lando could capitalise on this, because this has been something that not necessarily I’ve seen many times before, in terms of the amount of work, the people involved, and the rate of development.”

For Stella’s boss, McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown, this was a personal achievement as well as a professional one. Brown started backing Norris on a management level when he was 14 (like to profile), supported him through the junior ranks and brought him to McLaren.

For his family, there have been sacrifices, as his Belgian mother Cisca told BBC Radio 5 Live after the race.

“It’s overwhelming, emotionally draining, but we backed Lando during all the good and bad times. We always stood on his side, and not just Lando, but it was all the children. It’s a dream come true for Lando.

“We didn’t push the children; they had chosen what they wanted to do, and we supported them. It does take sacrifices because the girls and the boys have been growing up almost separate. It was passing ships in the night, they chose what they wanted to do and we supported it.

“It takes its toll because I missed Lando growing up. When he was eight, he started to compete. It took him all over the place, but Adam (Lando Norris’ dad) stood on his side, and I missed him badly. I am still missing him. I don’t see him often.

“He can do what he wants, he is a grown-up man and the last six months, he has changed and become stronger in his mind as well.”

As he came to the end of his remarks post-race, Norris was still reflecting on the difficulties, and how they had helped turn adversity into the ultimate success.

“If I look back at it from the first half of the season,” he said, “not the most impressive.

“Certainly times I’ve made some mistakes, I’ve made some bad judgments, I’ve made my errors.