By his own admission, Lando Norris has always struggled with self-belief.
How might his maiden title change him? That’s the really exciting thing about the perfectly imperfect champion of F1 2025…
Lando Norris: F1’s perfectly imperfect champion
A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2025 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix
Lando Norris has always been a fascinating driver to watch by traditional F1 standards.
All the talent in the world, but with only a fraction of the self-belief.
Usually in sport one thing tends to lead to another: talent breeds performance, breeds confidence, breeds even more performance.
Yet Lando?
Somehow he’s always needed convincing all over again every time he lowers himself into the cockpit of a racing car.
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It was, fittingly for a driver with the Gen Z touch, one of the first series of Drive to Survive that truly opened eyes to the extent of his crushing – at times debilitating – self-doubt.
One particular scene revealed how Lando effectively locked himself in his room inside McLaren’s hospitality unit at the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix, muttering that he was “one-nil down” already to Daniel Ricciardo after their first qualifying session together as teammates.
The gap between them that day, you ask? A mere half a tenth.
Norris soon put that right, leaving Daniel behind in the race to set the tone for a season in which he surgically removed Ricciardo’s mojo.
Turned out that Lando didn’t know his own strength. His worst fears were proven to be totally unfounded.
But his highly emotional, disproportionate response to a single qualifying result at the start of a new season raised an interesting question: if he was like this after a relatively minor setback, how exactly would he react to real moments of adversity?
Watching Oscar Piastri come along and beat him to a first victory for McLaren at the Qatar sprint race – a disappointment he seemed to take particularly personally – in 2023?
All the various missed opportunities of 2024, culminating in that wretched, rainy afternoon in Brazil?
Look for the signs and it is something both he and McLaren have become mindful of, and sought to manage, over the years.
It was revealing, for instance, when Zak Brown said last winter that the team had decided against keeping Norris informed of the race situation with the constructors’ title on the line in Abu Dhabi.
See also Norris’s recent revelation that he removed the delta time on his steering wheel in qualifying earlier this season, similarly allowing him to concentrate on the simple act of driving without worrying about what it all might mean.
Together they have worked on his weaknesses and tried keep his job as simple and straightforward as possible.
So much so that when Norris was last confronted with real, potentially season-defining disappointment with his retirement at Zandvoort, it was not the end of his world but, instead, the best thing that ever happened to him.
Finally, having been stifled by the scrutiny and pressure of the title fight almost all year long with only fleeting moments of relief, Lando was liberated.
And there is nothing more lethal than a racing driver with nothing left to lose.
The title may have only been secured in Abu Dhabi, but it was those nerveless, un-Landolike victories in Mexico and Brazil – now rising to the challenge in scenarios in which he had previously crumbled – that pulled him clear.
The exciting thing is that Norris remains so perfectly imperfect.
Even at the end of his seventh full season, even with a world championship already to his name, still he is a work in progress.
There is potential in there still untapped. His main limitations are still under maintenance.
Perhaps the true value of this title triumph, then, will be found not in the achievement itself and the feel of that trophy in his hands, but in what it might do to him and how it might transform him.
The confidence it will bring. The inner peace. The self-assurance and self-satisfaction.
He’s always struggled to see it for himself.
Maybe now, though, Lando will finally realise just how good he really is.
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