Norris told reporters the next day that he carried on partying until 6 a.m.<\/p>\n
A disappointing trip to McDonald\u2019s followed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wanted some McNuggets, but it was the morning, so they didn\u2019t have any left,\u201d he said. \u201cI had a Sausage McMuffin. Was it the breakfast of champions? Certainly not. I regretted it straightaway.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norris had a raft of interviews to complete as his head pounded. Next day, he was back at the wheel of his MCL39 for a tire test. Such is how all F1 seasons end these days \u2013 with more track time.<\/p>\n
F1\u2019s title celebrations have taken place in many locations over its 75-year history. The season\u2019s champion isn\u2019t officially crowned until the FIA\u2019s prize-giving gala. For Norris, this event happened in Uzbekistan on Friday.<\/p>\n
The stories from down the years about how a driver celebrated their first world title show the intense pressure behind F1\u2019s sleek surface. They also reveal what happens when that pressure is finally lifted.<\/p>\n
Norris\u2019 late night and nixed nuggets will become his title\u2019s quirky footnote. Previous champions let go with more abandon \u2013 stand by for thrown televisions, forklift joyrides and team bosses brawling with bouncers at the victory parties.<\/p>\n
Beer, brawls and forklift joyrides<\/p>\n
Norris\u2019 2025 triumph is reminiscent of the 1976 championship clinched by his British compatriot, and fellow McLaren driver, James Hunt.<\/p>\n
Although the sporting action played out in contrasting ways \u2014 there were also no shocking, near-fatal crashes this season \u2014 Norris shares Hunt\u2019s laid-back demeanor. And both went up against famous rivals who lived to drive racing cars. For Max Verstappen in 2025, read Niki Lauda back then.<\/p>\n
In the 1976 Japanese GP, Hunt secured his first and only F1 title. It had seemed destined to go to Lauda until the Austrian\u2019s near-fatal crash at the German GP that year.<\/p>\n
When he crossed the line, Hunt thought he had lost. Back then, driver-to-pitwall communication was nothing like the constant data streams and radio channels in F1 today. As he climbed from his car, Hunt berated McLaren team boss Teddy Mayer about confusing pit-stop signals late in the wet race \u2014 unaware the crowd was cheering him as the new world champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to let myself think I\u2019d won if I hadn\u2019t. The disappointment would\u2019ve been terrible,\u201d Hunt later told reporters. \u201cThen everyone started shouting that I\u2019d won and I realized that I really had.\u201d<\/p>\n
Once confirmed as the title winner, Hunt was \u201cseldom seen without a can of beer,\u201d according to the late journalist Eoin Young in Autosport magazine. Hunt and other McLaren personnel flew home to London. In 1976, that journey involved a refueling stop in Anchorage, Alaska.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost people slept for much of the distance from Tokyo and were reasonably refreshed by Anchorage, but Hunt was still going, seemingly fueled but by no means overfilled by a constant intake of ale,\u201d wrote Young.<\/p>\n
\u201cI tell the plane story only to illustrate a side of Hunt\u2019s complex character, a young man relaxed after the rigors of a hard year, now happy inside and showing it outside, the tenseness gone.\u201d<\/p>\n
That extra parallel between Hunt and Norris, who felt the pressure of a three-way decider in Abu Dhabi last week, extends to one of F1\u2019s most successful champions, Michael Schumacher. McLaren team boss Andrea Stella referenced the legendary German driver \u2014 for whom Stella worked as a performance engineer at Ferrari in the early 2000s \u2014 in the aftermath of Norris\u2019 triumph.<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t just about the release of season-long title battle pressure. Schumacher had a scrappy final race in 2003, but like Norris finishing third last Sunday, he eventually came home in the eighth-place minimum position he\u2019d needed in the decisive Japanese GP.<\/p>\n
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\n Michael Schumacher celebrates his 2003 world title with Andrea Stella, right, and other Ferrari staff. (Clive Mason \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
\u201c(Abu Dhabi 2025) reminded me very much of 2003,\u201d Stella said last Sunday. \u201cA (championship) that ended after the last race, there were a few bumps towards the end, and the whole season was very tense and balanced.\u201d<\/p>\n
Post-race at Suzuka 2003, Schumacher and his younger brother Ralf, then racing for Williams, began the celebrations, which started with several Ferrari team members shaving their heads. But that was only the start of the escalation to come.<\/p>\n
The siblings \u2014 joined at various points by other F1 drivers \u2014 at multiple stages threw a TV from an office window and went joyriding on a paddock forklift truck. The elder Schumacher lost his Ferrari shirt and ended up soaked in alcohol while wearing another from the rival Toyota team. At one stage in a nearby restaurant, he grabbed some of McLaren driver Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen\u2019s spaghetti dinner straight from his plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch jolly banter ensued,\u201d declared Autosport.<\/p>\n
Ferrari opted not to discipline its star driver over the chaos.<\/p>\n
In 2010, Adrian Newey\u2019s Red Bull team scooped both the constructors\u2019 and drivers\u2019 prizes, with Sebastian Vettel winning the latter, ahead of his teammate and Oscar Piastri\u2019s current manager, Mark Webber.<\/p>\n
Like McLaren this year, Red Bull clinched the constructors\u2019 title early, when Vettel won the Brazilian GP. In his 2017 autobiography, Newey recalls throwing a last-minute championship party at a quirky country house in the suburbs of S\u00e3o Paulo. Christian Horner, the Red Bull team boss, and Newey arrived late.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t find the entrance, so we wandered around the back and saw our boys behind metal crowd barriers, drinking Champagne,\u201d Newey wrote. \u201cAs we both climbed over, a bunch of ape-like Brazilian bouncers appeared to stop us getting in. They weren\u2019t having any of it. First, they picked up Christian around his middle and turfed him back over the metal barrier, as a dog would do with its puppy, then they made a move on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mechanics eventually rescued Newey and Horner but the two never made it into the party. At the next race, after Vettel\u2019s Abu Dhabi 2010 win had secured his first of four titles, remarkably, the same thing happened again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe staggered back to the hotel, where there was an impromptu party in one of the function rooms,\u201d wrote Newey. \u201cOnce again, when Christian and I tried to get into our party, we were turned away by the bouncers on the door, only this time we said, \u2018That\u2019s it\u2019, and the pair of us rushed the bouncers, pushed past them, and finally got into our own party.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Max Verstappen celebrates with his team after winning the 2021 title in Abu Dhabi (Bryn Lennon \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
When Abu Dhabi became Party Central<\/p>\n
The Red Bull\/Vettel dominance ended in 2014, when Mercedes ended their 59-year F1 championship drought. From 2014 to 2020, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg then won seven drivers\u2019 titles in a row for the Silver Arrows. The team also claimed eight consecutive constructors\u2019 titles, up to 2021. With their prolonged success, Mercedes made their end-of-year celebration at an Abu Dhabi hotel a yearly tradition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were never great party people or celebration people,\u201d Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff said when The Athletic asked for his favorite memories of such celebrations. \u201cEven after racing, sometimes, (we\u2019d say), \u2018OK, let\u2019s ditch the photo and jump on the earlier flight\u2019. And then Aldo Costa (Mercedes\u2019 former engineering chief) said to us, \u2018We\u2019re not celebrating the wins enough here\u2019. And we tried to be better at that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercedes made the Abu Dhabi hotel parties an annual ritual, Wolff said, with attendees\u2019 phones dutifully collected at the door to prevent any incriminating footage from leaking. The system worked \u2014 until 2021, when someone kept their device and captured Wolff crowdsurfing in the early hours after Hamilton\u2019s crushing title defeat to Verstappen. \u201cWhat a surprise alcohol can do to people, including myself,\u201d Wolff said. \u201cThose evenings, Sunday nights in Abu Dhabi, throughout the years, were really nice moments to remember.\u201d<\/p>\n
But while Abu Dhabi has been hosting F1\u2019s end-of-season parties for the past 11 years, it has held only four title deciders. Hamilton celebrated championship wins in Austin, Texas (twice), Mexico (also twice) and Turkey. Max Verstappen followed his 2021 Abu Dhabi title with celebrations in Suzuka, Qatar and Las Vegas.<\/p>\n