The montage, Lando Norris called it.
A sequence, cinematic in its presentation, that began in his head two laps out. Until that point he was almost puzzled by his absence of emotion. He thought he would be feeling more. He was happy that he felt calm, but wondered when the sensation would hit. Formula 1 drivers’ champion.
It would be glib to call it a dream. Sure, it was that, but it was more. It was hours, weeks, months, years, a young life on the track. Behind the wheel. In little karts. Actually before little karts. PlayStation with his dad. Gran Turismo 3. He wasn’t even in primary school then. He didn’t know what Formula 1 was.
And then it arrived, like an explosion of fireworks. Lando Norris wouldn’t need a screenwriter to capture the film of his life. It was all there, all replaying before him. Sometimes he was seeing it through his eyes, sometimes watching it from above. His dad, his mum, his brother, the cars, the tracks, the console, Monaco, Silverstone, even the hours just passed.
A young Norris in his karting days
REX
For the last two laps at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina track, Norris sat back and watched a film. A film of his life. A film in which he was the star. Little Lando, the go-karter. Look what became of him.
Norris would not like to be thought egotistical. He actually considered looking up a video of previous drivers’ celebrations because he wasn’t sure how to play it on Sunday. But this wasn’t a conscious exercise. It was just there, this stuff. All the triumphs, all the disappointments. Mum in the garage, Dad at the circuit. The pair of them were waiting for him back at McLaren central, crying, as he did.
Later they would party at the W Hotel, where Lando would sing We are the Champions and drink vodka and dad Adam would hit the dancefloor to his son’s fake embarrassment. Then, after 6am when the club closed, they would go looking for a McDonald’s on Abu Dhabi’s Yas Island. Unsuccessfully, as what Lando wanted was chicken nuggets, but they were only serving breakfast so he settled for a chicken sausage and egg McMuffin. The last time he had one was on a summer golf trip with his mates. He didn’t fancy it, but they insisted. Now it was the breakfast of champions. “It certainly wasn’t, I regretted it,” Norris said.
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He is sitting in a room on the fifth floor of the Hilton Yas Island, home to team McLaren this last week. The sun is going down across the bay, the bathers have left the pool, tomorrow morning he will test new tyres on the Abu Dhabi track. For now, however, the 35th F1 champion can reflect. On his win, on his journey, on his life. That is what happened over those last two laps. That is the image he wants framed: coming around the final bend, the scene that spread out before him.
“That was the best, best, memory of all,” he insists. “That final corner. I really want to get someone to do a painting of it. I need to find an artist. Do it from my view, my eyes, what I saw, obviously through the visor, and with the bumps and everything, seeing all the papayas and then the chequered flag, the whole thing lifting off and then I had my gloves up here because I started to cry. I want to savour that moment because that was really the ‘it’ moment. It was everything. Everything was then defined by it, which was pretty …”
Norris crosses the line in Abu Dhabi
AP
Norris trails off. He looks as if may cry again. He’s been on the verge of tears, and not always on the verge, for close on 24 hours now. It’s the side of his character that made some think he was soft, that he lacked the killer instinct to depose a great champion like Max Verstappen. Yet Norris did it. He saw off Verstappen in Abu Dhabi, did what he had to do. He took his chance, seized the day.
Such timing should never be underestimated. Colin Montgomerie could not do it, nor Lee Westwood, nor Gareth Southgate with England, or Mauricio Pochettino at Tottenham Hotspur. We’ll see about the Arsenal of Mikel Arteta. Yet given a chance, Norris grabbed it. So when that reel began playing, the final scene brought him right up to the present day. It’s his story. Let him tell it.
“It surprised me,” Norris admitted, “because with three laps to go I started thinking, ‘I’m getting pretty close here. I’m not really feeling anything yet.’ Which was actually a good thing, I think, because it was very much the proof to myself of how calm and focused I was at the time, treating it like another race weekend, just like we said. Then I was thinking: ‘Still not feeling anything, is this going to mean a lot or not?’ I didn’t know what it was going to be like. And the next lap I started having these cool flashbacks, this montage of my life.
“It was like a movie. You know when you get those flashbacks at the end and you see the last moments of someone. It’s not the last moment of me, but it was like that. As much as I was just trying to avoid every bump possible, I was also remembering all of it, from the very beginning, the first time driving the go-kart ever. And even before that when I was doing quad bikes, motocross.
“It was really just me, my dad, my brother, having fun as a trio because we liked cars and bikes” — Norris’s family, led by his parents Cisca and Adam, right, have supported him throughout
SARA RUFFONI/ZUMA PRESS WIRE/SHUTTERSTOCK
“My dad — it’s his dream too. He knows everything, you know, he knows what we’ve gone through, he knows the struggles, the good things, the great times, I mean, he’s the reason. I played Gran Turismo 3 on the PlayStation with him when I was like, three or four years old. So that’s where it all kind of started. He was very much part of it the whole way through. My first time on the actual racetrack in the go-kart. The races I had, world championships 2014, just so many different moments.
“And I was watching … me. Before it meant anything, just pure and natural and doing it because I loved it. The biggest difference to what it is now. Pre the start of the journey. Like some of it was me living it, but some of it was watching me, watching me drive around, all happening within the space of a couple of minutes. When I pictured it, some of the very early moments, at that age when I didn’t even know what Formula 1 was. You know, it probably wasn’t until I was nine or ten when I started to watch it every weekend. We’d wake up at 4am. Those were the best mornings.
“So when I went back to then, it was cool because I just was doing karting because I loved karting, not because it had anything to do with F1. It was really just me, my dad, my brother, having fun as a trio because we were the guys who liked cars and bikes, and all that stuff. So it just takes me back to the origin of where everything was.
“And I’m watching from above. Like God! I’m just watching a bird’s-eye, helicopter view. Watching me drive around. Such a small me, but also such a small mind at that point. You know? No idea about Formula 1. But now I’m thinking, ‘One day I’m going to achieve this, you know? Be a world champion.’ Like that’s a pretty crazy thought to have with me just going around, minding my own business with a smile on my face. I mean, I wasn’t that good when it started at all. I was finishing tenth or 15th or whatever. It was just like a cool, fun thing to do.
“And, obviously, then the last seven years with McLaren up to this day, all the memories good and bad. Monaco, especially, was a great moment, Silverstone, all the way to the final race of the season. So then going under the bridge for the final time, I started imagining my mum in the garage… actually not in the garage, in my driving room, and that made me a bit emotional.”
Norris admitted that thinking of his mother Cisca, pictured with his girlfriend Margarida Corceiro, made him emotional while racing in Abu Dhabi
ANP/SHUTTERSTOCK
He still looks it, as if the dam could burst at any second. “I don’t know what it was,” Norris protests. “I don’t really get like that over anything. Before the weekend I thought, ‘Do I look up a video, like how to celebrate a world championship?’ And I was going to look at Sebastian Vettel, because he’s always good for celebrations and doing cool, unique things. Lewis Hamilton too. I was thinking, ‘What do I do? Do I need to copy some of these things?’ But I’m happy I didn’t in the end, because what played out was just what I felt in the moment and that’s what made it extra special.”
If he’s still thinking of that painting, Ronnie O’Sullivan has a map of his fastest ever one-visit 147 — five minutes, 20 seconds — on his wall, as set down by his friend Damien Hirst. He’d need to be even quicker, mind, to capture Norris.