How Lando Norris is building up an empire outside F1

9am on a late spring day in Monaco and already the sun is intense enough to have GP Racing scuttling for shade in the forecourt of the Columbus Hotel.

On the opposite side of the road, in full stealth mode – backwards-turned baseball cap, dark shades and an on-brand Quadrant hoodie – Lando Norris is chatting to a lycra-clad Mark Webber, off to crest one of the local cols on his bicycle before lunch. Webber waves a cheery farewell, clips in and pedals souplesse into the sunshine.

As Lando joins us we notice an additional element of disguise: the wispy beginnings of a beard protruding from his chin, soon to be premiered to viewers of his YouTube channel as he essays an exclusive preview of the new F1 2023 game. Monaco, where Lando has resided since early 2022, is famously protective of the privacy of its residents; we can’t help but wonder if there’s been an element of culture shock having moved from leafy Surrey, where people say hello to one another while out walking the dogs. Is Monaco and the riviera – famously described by Somerset Maugham, who kept a mansion on nearby St Jean Cap Ferrat, as “a sunny place for shady people” – more like London, where residents act as if nobody else exists?

“Kind of,” laughs Lando. “There are more people with chihuahuas in handbags and that sort of stuff… It’s a nice place. It’s quiet at times and I think a lot of people mind their own business – which is also, I guess, another reason why I like it. But you get to know a few people and you always bump into them because it’s such a small place.”

As if to emphasis this point our West Wing-style walk-and-talk westward, past the Roseraie Princess Grace and the Jardin aux Canards and skirting the helipad which whisks plutocrats twixt the Principality and Nice airport, is briefly interrupted by a young couple strolling in the opposite direction who bid Lando a delighted good morning. Ready to be impressed at this illustration of Monaco’s goldfish-bowl nature, GP Racing enquires whether he actually knows them.

“No! And this is one of my more discreet outfits. Maybe they recognise me by my lips…”

Moving to an enclave where you can drive from one border to the opposite side in minutes (albeit not in rush hour) almost inevitably means forming connections with people in a similar trade. As we cross said border into France, hugging the coastline past the marina at Cap d’Ail and on to the promenade, some recognisable faces come trotting past on their morning runs.

Norris speaks with our man Stuart Codling on a beautiful morning in Monaco

Photo by: Alister Thorpe / GP Racing

“If I go out,” says Lando, “I’m more likely to go for a cycle than a run. The running is lovely but I’m more likely to go for a little cycle up the mountain or something.”

He gestures in the direction of the famous Tête de Chien, the limestone outcrop above the village of La Turbie which towers over the Monaco skyline. The hairpin-strewn road up to there from Cap d’Ail was the scene of many an epic finale to the annual Paris-Nice road race, including Raymond Poulidor’s defeat of Eddy Merckx in 1972. Not that Lando hangs out with the many pro cyclists resident in Monaco, or even Alex Wurz and his ‘chain gang’ of current and retired racing drivers; he prefers to hit the road with his neighbour Thierry Vermuelen, a DTM racer and son of Max Verstappen’s manager.

“It’s nice to go out training with someone. We’re together a lot. I went to a GT race Thierry did at Brands Hatch, which was a fun thing – I haven’t been to Brands in years, and it was good to go and watch a race that wasn’t F1, which is something else I haven’t done in a while.”

The off-track life of an F1 driver doesn’t necessarily rotate around leisure and training, though. Many have expanded their interests into the business world, driven by a competitive itch as well as the need to retain a purpose come retirement: David Coulthard was an early investor in the Columbus Hotel and co-founded the award-winning Whisper Films, producer of Channel 4’s F1 coverage; Valtteri Bottas has launched his own make of artisan gin; and Jenson Button has a whisky brand as well as an ongoing collaboration with Hackett. Typically it’s something drivers begin to contemplate as they realise more of their racing careers lie in the rear-view mirror – but not in Lando’s case.

"It was a new thing for me to start up this kind of thing and be introduced to the mechanics of running a business. But it was something I loved so much – I wanted to do it, I was passionate about it. Once it started it began to roll quite quickly" Lando Norris

During the early Covid lockdowns the majority of people occupied themselves with online gaming or binge-watching Tiger King and such. There were notable outliers such as Vladimir Putin who, perhaps in the absence of a Netflix subscription, took the route of sitting in a darkened room scheming world domination. Lando Norris took his first steps to becoming a business magnate, announcing the launch of his Quadrant company during a Twitch livestream in late 2020.

“It was something I’d wanted to do before [2020], even,” says Lando. “We spoke about it often through 2017, ’18, ’19 but there just wasn’t enough time to commit to doing it because there was so much focus on getting Formula 1 right. We were going to let things kind of settle down, three or four years, for me to get a little bit more into the life of F1. So we thought about it like this. But then when Covid came up there was the opportunity to do it – everyone was at home, everyone was playing games and connecting with each other online. That was how so many people were dealing with the big change in their lives. It seemed like a good time to start something.

“So we started talking to some people and seeing how we could put it all together. And then we came across the Veloce Group, and things kind of started rolling from there.”

Norris' Quadrant company came into being during the COVID lockdown of 2020

Photo by: Alister Thorpe / GP Racing

Veloce was co-founded in 2018 by former Toro Rosso F1 driver Jean-Eric Vergne, retired racers Rupert Svendsen-Cook and Jack Clarke, and former football agent Jamie MacLaurin. From an entry point as a professional esports organisation it’s become a multi-media powerhouse with a reach into ‘real’ as well as virtual racing, operating a race-winning Extreme E team and backing multiple champion Jamie Chadwick in the now-defunct W Series. Official F1 Esports series champion Jarno Opmeer is also on the books.

It was Veloce which took the initiative of kickstarting the “Not The Grand Prix” virtual racing series within 48 hours of the Australian GP’s cancellation in March 2020, tapping up Lando as well as influential esports racers such as Jimmy Broadbent alongside other sporting stars. The relationship developed as Lando became a regular fixture in the series and the company seemed a natural fit to facilitate Lando’s vision of what Quadrant should be – and to do the heavy lifting for an individual still focused on a growing F1 career.

“It sort of took a while to get things started after first thinking of the idea a few years before,” says Lando. “But in terms of starting a business and company and things like that, things actually started to go pretty quickly. Especially for me, it was a new thing for me to start up this kind of thing and be introduced to the mechanics of running a business. But it was something I loved so much – I wanted to do it, I was passionate about it. Once it started it began to roll quite quickly.

“Choosing the right people was one of the hardest things to do. But I’m confident to say I think we found the best people in such a short time to put it all together and do an extremely good job. They’re passionate about what they do and have a lot of knowledge in many different areas – for instance Jamie was a massive gamer when he was younger – still is, actually, we still hop online every now and then and play some games.”

The Quadrant name is a play on Lando’s race number and what he describes as the “four pillars of the business – racing, gaming, clothing and content”. His aim in giving the enterprise a name of its own is to enable it to exist separately from his own personal brand, building towards a more universal appeal outside motor racing. Hence the merchandise, for instance, leans in to street fashion rather than the logo-bedecked artificial fabrics of most official racing merch.

“The merchandise is one of the biggest areas of it. It’s one of the things that people love the most in a way. People wear clothes every day, after all…

“The right kind of merch, that’s the tough part of it. I’m happy to say we’ve sold out everything we’ve done so far. I guess I have a good fan base.

Norris' clothing goes beyond motorsport and has "sold out everything"

Photo by: Alister Thorpe / GP Racing

“When you’re designing and creating merchandise, you want something people are happy to wear. And you have the fans who are racing based, who might have been my fans for years, others who are maybe fans of Quadrant, the gaming things. But at the same time you want to expand even on top of that – you want to appeal to people who have no idea about racing or games. That’s when it gets more complicated. So you have to come up with better ideas and cooler things, hiring more people to look into where it’s best to target – marketing people as well as designers. Too complicated for me! But it’s a cool thing to be part of, just coming up with different ideas and ways of introducing Quadrant to the normal home life and lifestyle of people.”

The aim is for Lando to be, if not hands-off, certainly a little less front-of-house – for the Quadrant brand to take on a life of its own. Post-pandemic he’s had less time on his hands, although the Veloce team still refers to him as “the CEO”.

“Of course, during Covid it was easy to be involved in every video and do all of this, which was perfect for the launch,” says Lando. “But at the same time Quadrant, hopefully, isn’t something that’s reliant upon me to be in all of it. I want it to be almost a separate place where I’m involved but, at the same time, it can run happily and still be very successful even if I’m not in everything. That’s the plan for it – right now I could put a lot more time in there but all my focus is on Formula 1. When I have the free time I help as much as I can.”

"The target is to move outside car racing. It’s still early days but we’re pushing on with it as much as we can, aiming to choose the right people to represent us. Not people who just say ‘yes’ to stuff" Lando Norris

By all accounts this takes the form of fusillades of WhatsApp messages crammed with ideas for everything from new merchandise to videos on Quadrant’s YouTube channel. From the off, the content element has been a partnership with online gaming personalities and creators with suitably eccentric gamertags: Steve ‘SuperGT’ Alvarez, Maria ‘RishBish’ Bish, Arav ‘Aarava’ Amin and Niran ‘FNG’ Yesufu, latterly joined by Call of Duty streamer Ethan ‘Fifakill’ Pink and Lando’s old racing rival Max Fewtrell. Lando appears in solo videos as well as alongside his fellow creators and the tone is entertaining and irreverent, sometimes even anarchic – a vast departure from the kind of stuffy corporate gigs drivers still have to participate in. “I don’t have a Scooby Doo where I’m going,” he giggles while exploring the new Las Vegas track for the first time during his F1 2023 game preview video; not words you would expect to be welcomed in the McLaren simulator.

While esports remains a curiously polarising field – you either get it and are utterly embedded in the world or have no interest whatsoever – it’s an increasingly big business and not just in terms of prize money. Quadrant’s esports arm has a raft of official partners for its teams in the Rocket League and Halo championships, supplying branded gear: SCUF controllers, JBL Quantum headsets and Elgato streaming equipment.

In the coming months Lando’s company is going to expand even further, with an athletes programme a little bit like that which Red Bull has operated successfully for many years now, broadening brand identity by supporting competitors in extreme sports.

Norris hopes to expand into an athlete development programme, akin to Red Bull's

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“The target is to move outside car racing,” says Lando. “It’s still early days but we’re pushing on with it as much as we can, aiming to choose the right people to represent us. Not people who just say ‘yes’ to stuff but people who are passionate and want to be part of something new and exciting.

“It’s going to be cool stuff – more extreme sports. A programme like this, it’s the next step we want to take because I don’t want Quadrant to be just about gaming, I want it to be representative and be part of many people’s stories. So the athlete programme will be our next big thing, trying to find different people, probably a younger demographic, to represent Quadrant through the journey they’re doing. My interests are kind of on the X-Games side of it – snowboarding, skateboarding, motocross, rallycross – anything that’s spectacular and engaging and a bit crazy.

“Well, quite a lot crazy…”

Lando Norris standing next to his customised McLaren 765LT Spider - a treat to himself

Photo by: McLaren

Lando’s new wheels

McLaren has a rich tradition of offering bespoke finishing touches on its road cars. In 1969 Bruce McLaren built his own – based on a racing chassis – and, when the company set out to create was then the ultimate road-going performance car in the 1990s, the aptly named F1, customers with deep enough pockets to buy one could call most of the shots. Infamously, one customer asked for theirs in the deep purple lustre of an aubergine; McLaren staff went on a shopping spree to offer him a selection, then colour-matched the finished car to his chosen aubergine… only for him to decide against buying the car. Still, it found an owner and is now in Hong Kong.

The modern incarnation of McLaren Automotive, launched by former group CEO Ron Dennis in 2009, is based alongside the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, in a factory built half underground and screened from passing traffic (to comply with planning regs rather than Ron’s need for secrecy). A sub-division called McLaren Special Operations offers the bespoke tailoring service and Lando took full advantage when he ordered his limited-edition 765LT Spider. It is, to use millennial parlance, “fully loaded” and even includes his personal logo embroidered into the headrests.

“It’s beautiful,” he says. “I’m very, very happy. I guess it’s probably my most expensive purchase. One way of rewarding myself or giving something back to myself, I suppose, and it’s come out really nice…”

Should you wish to build your own Lando-alike 765LT Spider – well, you’re too late, because all 765 of the twin-turbo 765bhp V8-powered speed machines have been sold

Giving something back to McLaren as well, GP Racing cheekily suggests.

“Ha! In a way – it’s good for them at the same time. I think it looks amazing, especially in the sunshine like we’ve got today. It’s all blue carbon fibre, the whole thing. I’m a carbon fibre addict. I just love the look of it. I specced as much of it as I could, every little detail is customised to what I would like, both inside and outside. It’s gonna be insane.

“MSO will literally go as far as you want with the car. I doubt there’s many customised cars you can get which are as good as this. So many other car companies are very limited with what you’re allowed to do, but with MSO you can do anything. It’s pretty epic the level of detail, they look into every single part of the car, change colour, change shape. There’s so many options. Obviously I’m biased but I’d would say MSO was the best for customising and getting your personality into a car.”

Should you wish to build your own Lando-alike 765LT Spider – well, you’re too late, because all 765 of the twin-turbo 765bhp V8-powered speed machines have been sold. But you could order a regular production car and select a few of the following from the MSO options: Gloss Blue
Tint Carbon fibre exterior with contrasting Satin Visual Carbon fibre details; Satin Black wheels with Lando Yellow brake callipers; Carbon fibre Exterior Upgrade Packs (there are three, covering front and rear diffusers, air intakes, door mirrors, side skirts, rear wing and roof); and don’t forget the titanium exhaust, MSO custom steering wheel, custom instrument graphics and carbon fibre Union-flag door sills.

On and off-track, Norris is steadily building into a superstar

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images