What’s the breakfast of champions?
Don’t ask Lando Norris. He wouldn’t know.
The first-time world champion partied through Sunday night and into the next morning in Abu Dhabi after finishing the season-ending grand prix third to clinch his maiden title.
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By 6am, with light just about on the horizon, he was feeling hungry.
“I really wanted some Chicken McNuggets, but it was the morning by then, so they didn’t have any left,” he said.
“I had a Sausage McMuffin. Was it the breakfast of champions? Certainly not. I regretted it straightaway.”
It’s a regret he’ll be able to live with as the enormity of his achievement sets in.
Norris is Formula 1’s 35th different drivers champion and the eighth to have won it in a McLaren. He won the title at the end of the year in which he became McLaren’s longest serving driver, having eclipsed David Coulthard tenure by two races.
Most seismic, however, is that he ended Max Verstappen’s reign as world champion.
The Dutchman’s title defence lasted 1456 days, spanning his first triumph in Abu Dhabi in 2021 to his two-point defeat at the same venue on Sunday.
For the first time in three years, the No. 1 will switch cars, with Norris bringing the championship number to McLaren for the first time since Lewis Hamilton bore the famous digit in 2009.
Running the No. 1 hasn’t been a requirement for the reigning champion since the sport granted drivers use of their own personal numbers in 2014. Hamilton, for example, continued using No. 44 throughout his title-winning years at Mercedes.
But Norris, who has raced as No. 4 for his entire career, said bringing the championship number to his car was both recognition of tradition and a reward for his garage.
“It’s there for a reason,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s there because you can go and try grab it and you can work hard to try and get it.
“All of us as a team that gets to have a role in McLaren, or my car, will get to wear that with pride. It’s all my mechanics, my engineers, everyone that’s part of McLaren gets to have that acknowledgment too.
“It’s not for me, it’s for them as well. It’s their pride, knowing that they put a lot of work and effort into everything that they can also go, ‘We’re number one’.”
Norris claims maiden World Title | 03:41
Certainly there was significant effort required to get Norris over the line.
The Briton trailed teammate Oscar Piastri by 34 points with nine rounds remaining after an engine problem saw him retire from the Dutch Grand Prix in August.
But he rallied to outscore the Australian at the following six rounds in a 58-point turnaround to put him on the championship brink.
His recovery defied expectations set in the first half of the season, when Piastri looked comfortable in the lead of the standings and appeared to have Norris on the ropes.
McLaren CEO Zak Brown praised Norris’s personal development on the path to his maiden title.
“It’s a long season, and the way I’ve seen him mature, especially the second part of the year — he started off as the favourite once we knew our car was really strong,” he told the UK’s Radio X. “He leads the championship early on, and there’s a difference between being the hunted and the hunter in such a long season.
“He had some challenges in the middle of the year and then came back super strong.”
But Brown also credited Piastri for pushing Norris to find another level, even if it ended up costing him a shot at the championship.
“Oscar did an unbelievable job over the [off-season],” he said. “I think the two of them helped raise each other’s game and raise the team’s game, so that’s a great thing.
“Of course these guys want to be world champions, and he was so close, so he’s disappointed in that.
“I don’t think he’s disappointed in the season. He should be very proud of it. He won seven races. Either of them could have won the championship.
“It’s a long season, and you get some good luck, you get some bad luck. He should be immensely proud.
“Of course when you cross the finish line and you’re in the race and it’s like, ‘I could be world champion’ it’s like any sport. If someone lost a football match, are they happy at that moment? Of course not.
“But when you sit back and reflect — man, he should be proud, and he is.”
The Melburnian improved beyond expectation between 2024 and 2025. Whereas last season he finished fourth in the standings and 82 points behind Norris — and 145 points off title winner Verstappen — this year he led the championship for 15 rounds, more than any other driver, and his 34-point lead in the Netherlands was the largest for any driver this year.
Piastri upbeat despite title loss | 02:36
It sets Piastri on a steep trajectory. If he were to take a similar step forward for 2026, he could emerge as the year’s absolute protagonist.
“I’m excited already for next year, because I think Oscar — he’s going to go back to Australia — is a very tough, very focused individual.
“It was only his third season, and Lando, this was his seventh season. Oscar is going to be a world champion, and it could be next year.
“He has very few areas he needs to improve upon. You should watch out for Oscar Piastri next year.”
McLaren made its championship campaign harder than it needed to be, particularly in the second half of the season as Red Bull Racing caught up to apply significant pressure via the resurgent Verstappen.
The team missed its first chance to win the constructors championship through season-worst performances from both drivers in Azerbaijan, delaying celebrations to the following round in Singapore.
The drivers championship was far more fraught.
A double disqualification in Las Vegas was particularly damaging for allowing Verstappen back into realistic contention, and a strategic howler in Qatar cost Piastri victory and had Norris finish off the podium, sending the fight down to the wire.
Norris did the minimum required in Abu Dhabi to seal it with a third-place finish — fourth would have seen the championship remain with Verstappen.
McLaren also came in for flack for the way it handled its drivers during the year per its so-called papaya rules, the internal principles that dictate how Piastri and Norris are allowed to race each other.
Several times this season the team’s interventions appeared to come at Piastri’s expense, with Norris getting a better strategy in Hungary, being moved into second place in Italy and not being punished for making contact in Singapore.
The team also named the risk to Norris’s race in Qatar as one reason, albeit not the decisive one, for making its strategic blunder in Lusail that cost Piastri a victory that would have given him a better shot in the decider.
‘Zak could’ve had a little more empathy’ | 01:26
Brown defended his team’s handling of the season, insisting McLaren only intervened to keep the internal playing field level.
“It’s a right way to go racing,” he said. “We like challenges. We’re racers.
“We’ve come under a lot of criticism from a lot of people on letting them race. It’s like, ‘Wait a minute, it’s a two-car team’.
“First of all, you’re not going to retain both drivers if you tell one they’re playing second fiddle. I love the way we go racing. That’s how McLaren’s always done it.
“It can end in tears, like [Ayrton] Senna and [Alain] Prost. Normally the drivers go at it.
“Lando and Oscar were a little grumpy with Andrea [Stella, team principal] and me from time to time, but kind of in equal portions.
“We’re just being fair and balanced. We’ve got to be the principals every once in a while.”
McLaren has consistently rejected accusations of bias towards Norris.
Piastri agrees, and though he said he expects conversations during the off-season to further hone the internal racing rules, he doesn’t expect any significant changes to the way McLaren treats his title aspirations despite Norris’s championship status.
“I don’t think that will change anything,” he said. “He’s obviously had a great season this year and is a deserving champion, but he’s still Lando Norris; it’s not like he’s become Superman.
“I’m expecting full fairness from the team and equality going forward. I don’t have any concerns that that will change at all.
“I think there’s a lot of good things that come from that. Yes, there’s difficult moments and tension at times, but I think both Lando and I have become better drivers from pushing each other to the limit.
“Sometimes that’s been uncomfortable for everyone, but ultimately it’s been a good thing.
“At the end of the day, they gave us both as good a chance as the team could have to fairly fight for a world championship, and that’s all you can ask for.”