Lando Norris said he is proud of the way he went about winning his first Formula One world championship, stating after an emotional celebration with his McLaren team and family that he was glad he \u201cwon it my way\u201d.<\/p>\n
Norris emphasised that he felt he had raced fairly and without being over aggressive, an approach for which he has received criticism in not\u00a0demonstrating the much eulogised \u201ckiller instinct\u201d, which he believes he has proved is not necessary by \u00adclaiming the title.<\/p>\n
Norris finished in third place at the Abu\u00a0Dhabi Grand Prix, enough to secure the world drivers\u2019 cham\u00adpionship by two points from Red\u00a0Bull\u2019s Max Verstappen<\/a>, who won the race but could not overcome \u00adNorris\u2019s 12-point advantage.<\/p>\n The 26-year-old Briton has been explicit all season that he felt he could win the title and still drive clean, and he felt he had made his point. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the things that makes me most proud,\u201d Norris said. \u201cI feel like I have just managed to win it the way I wanted to win it, which was not by being someone I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n \u201cNot trying to be as aggressive as Max or as forceful as other champions might have been in the past, I\u2019m happy. I just won it my way \u2013 by being a fair driver, by trying to be an honest driver. At times, could I have been more aggressive and got off the\u00a0brakes and had a few people over?\u00a0I certainly could have done. Is\u00a0that the way I want to go racing? Is that me? It\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n Norris also admitted that much as\u00a0he had appeared to be in complete control, the final moments were\u00a0nerve-jangling. \u201cI felt calm until three corners to go, I started to shake a little bit,\u201d he said. \u201cThen I got to see the team when I went over the line and this is a moment that I\u2019ll never forget.\u201d<\/p>\n Norris has made a remarkable comeback from 34 points off the leader Piastri in August after he failed to finish in Zandvoort<\/a> with a mechanical problem and admitted that low point had been a real spur to his efforts and that he had brought\u00a0new people into his team to try to hone his approach.<\/p>\n Oscar Piastri (left) on the podium after his second place in Abu Dhabi. Photograph: Antonin Vincent\/DPPI\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n \u201cI was like: \u2018Oh, shoot. I\u2019m quite a long way behind against a pretty freaking fast driver, and I\u2019ve got to step it up,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI got to be more myself because of external factors, working with more professionals in different areas to unlock more of my ability and when you saw that, I\u00a0had that run of great results, which is \u00adultimately what got me the championship in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n Verstappen took only positives from his and Red Bull\u2019s performances, having come back from a 104\u2011point deficit and believing they had given their all against a McLaren that was the superior car for most of the year. When asked if he thought it was the best he had driven in a career that included four titles, he concurred.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Sport in Focus<\/p>\n Our picture editors select their favourite sporting images from the past week, from the spectacular to the powerful, and with a little bit of fun thrown in<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think so, I mean, I have no regrets about my season,\u201d \u00adVerstappen said. \u201cI think the performance has been strong. I\u2019ve hated this car at times, but I\u2019ve also loved it at times. I always tried to extract the most from\u00a0it, even in the difficult \u00adweekends that we\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a proper rollercoaster with the car. Also, in the team we have a great atmosphere at the moment. We\u2019re really on a roll. Positive energy, belief, confidence and that\u2019s exactly what you want heading into next year.\u201d<\/p>\n However the Dutchman, who ultimately claimed eight wins \u2013 more than any other driver \u2013 reacted testily when asked if he had any regrets over\u00a0the incident at the Spanish GP where he was penalised for \u00addeliberately driving into George \u00adRussell\u2019s car, demoting him from fifth to 10th, which cost him nine points.<\/p>\n \u201cYou forget about all the other stuff that happened in my season,\u201d Verstappen snapped. \u201cThe only thing that you mention is Barcelona. I knew that would come. It is part of racing. You live and learn. A championship is won over 24 rounds and I have also had a lot of early Christmas presents given to me in the second half of the season so you can also question that, too.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris said he is proud of the way he went about winning his first Formula One world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-333476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula1","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}