How Norris became more than just McLaren's leader in F1 2021

“You must do very well in your first year. But the level of delivering at 100% in every single race, this comes a bit later. You have the best examples with drivers that have been spending more than two, three years with the same team.”

That’s how Carlos Sainz Jr views a driver’s progression timeframe at a new Formula 1 team. He should know. After all, he’s raced for nearly half of the current grid. But he also knows one of the three drivers who made their F1 debuts in 2019, and this year entered the key year-three test he outlines very well: Lando Norris.

The pair’s friendship has endured Sainz departing McLaren for Ferrari at the end of last year. The Spaniard has gone on to show excellence against superstar-in-waiting Charles Leclerc, while Norris made a new pairing with proven F1 race winner Daniel Ricciardo. The young Briton was one of the stories of the season, but does he agree with his friend’s assessment – that he should have made big progress in 2021 in any case?

“Yes, I would say so,” replies Norris. “I think my second year was good. Carlos, I believe, is one of the best drivers in F1. It also didn’t make me look as good because he’s an extremely good driver and he did a very good job – fair play to him. I think I got shadowed a bit by him because he was doing an exceptional job and I think this year I’ve taken that next step, which would have been the same or maybe a bit better than him.

“And that was through a combination of understanding everything from the past few years, having a bit of a fresh start, different team-mate and so on. Having a slightly better car underneath me that I’m more confident with. And that winter off, coming back refreshed and having a lot more of that experience ingrained in me, this year I really saw that difference more than I did maybe for year one to year two.”

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Norris’s season got off to a very strong start. After being best of the rest in the Bahrain opener, at Imola he really showed his class and development surge. Only a fractional slip beyond track limits in qualifying cost him a front row and possible pole shot, then in the race he surged up the order in the wet first half, was waved ahead of Ricciardo, and went on to nearly defy Lewis Hamilton for second place.

Norris was supreme at Imola, where he was unfortunate the red flag allowed Hamilton to close in and pass him for second

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

A further podium visit came his way in Monaco, while Ricciardo was lapped. Then he was a massive thorn in the side of Red Bull and Mercedes in both Austrian races, earning Hamilton’s praise after their first battle in the second race at the Red Bull Ring.

Norris’s fury over a highly contentious penalty for a clash with Sergio Perez earlier in that race, which cost him a shot at beating Valtteri Bottas to second, said much about his attitude – despite his third place equalling his best F1 result to date. His strong form continued before and after the summer break, with fourth on home soil at Silverstone and searing pace in the wet at Spa, before he failed to catch an oversteer snap and crashed in Q3, costing him another glittering result in the washout farce that followed.

He dutifully played the team game at Monza to take what’s now his best F1 result (second) behind the resurgent Ricciardo. But he might have been the lead McLaren on its 2021 day of days – he’d been faster in qualifying, but ended up behind his team-mate because Hamilton’s defence after making a poor start meant there was space for the Australian to surge ahead and follow Max Verstappen.

Then came September’s Russian GP. Norris, Sainz and George Russell starred in qualifying as they nailed the timing of the switch to slicks and got them up to temperature well, while Mercedes and Hamilton dithered and then lost time after hitting the pitlane wall.

"There were two pole positions [for Ferrari] so I think they’ve had a better car throughout the whole year than we have. But we did better especially in that first half with that consistency, maximising opportunities" Lando Norris

Sainz beat his former team-mate into the lead at Turn 2, but Norris harried him thereafter, then surged ahead as he got through the graining phase on the medium tyres, while the Ferrari had to pit. Hamilton came back at him towards the end of the second stint and may have been mounting a late attack, but then the rain arrived and it all went wrong for Norris and right for the older Briton.

Insight: 10 things we learned from F1 2021's Russian Grand Prix 

“I’m very happy relative to my last two seasons,” says Norris, reflecting on 2021 overall. “The first half was especially very strong. We came out of the start extremely strong and I think we maximised what we did very well, [taking] every opportunity we had to get onto the podiums.”

The strong results tailed off towards the end, with Ferrari – McLaren’s rival for third in the constructors’ – also performing much better through this stage with its significantly upgraded hybrid system. There were errors, such as moving over on Sainz at the start in Brazil, which Norris calls “one of my biggest mistakes of the season”, but there was misfortune too: his punctures in Qatar and Abu Dhabi. Norris views it more as coincidence than a trend that a similar drop-off happened in 2019 and 2020.

Norris regards his contact with Sainz off the startline in Sao Paolo as his biggest mistake of the year

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“There’s a combination of two things,” he explains. “One, I have made maybe a couple of more minor mistakes later in the season. And as a car and team, we’ve also just not been as strong. I want to believe that Ferrari in general have been better than us throughout this year.

“There were two pole positions [for Ferrari] so I think they’ve had a better car throughout the whole year than we have. But we did better especially in that first half with that consistency, maximising opportunities.”

Norris highlights improved race performance as a key target he hit in 2021, as he got better at “choosing when to take risks and when to not” and generally managed the multi-tasking on tyre management, fuel saving, overtaking and strategy calls over a GP distance to be “a lot more competitive [on Sundays] than I was last year”.

But adaptability when McLaren can’t get its package into a “really small window to really nail everything” on set-up and handling is a key area Norris has identified for being even better in 2022. One of the biggest difficulties with the MCL35M was often instability on corner entry and having to grapple with understeer as the balance was off, something that really hampered Ricciardo. Norris found that when this was particularly bad – often following events where McLaren had ended up in a strong position on car balance – he was overthinking his approach.

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“When it’s a bit trickier,” he says, “I don’t feel like I can be as natural and drive as quickly as I want.”

Both McLaren and Norris have also vowed to be better in the event of another Sochi scenario – should one arrive again, with as much glory on the line when a weather change rolls in. Norris was criticised by some for his shouted reactions to suggestions of changing tyres, but the problem, McLaren later reflected, was the process in making the critical call to pit and take intermediates.

The team, unsure of how intense the rain was going to get, asked Norris for his input and got a snappy reply. But he didn’t know his squad couldn’t predict the rain getting as bad as it did, which combined to result in his spectacular and heartbreaking fall to seventh. Other drivers benefited from being ordered to pit or getting clear information on their rivals (as was the case with Hamilton).

Norris had Russian Grand Prix in the bag before late rain and delayed pit call cost him a maiden win

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“It’s still painful,” Norris reflects on his victory near-miss. “I’ve moved on from it for sure. The fact it was a question, they didn’t know the rain was going to be getting a lot worse and didn’t communicate that to me has made it a bit easier to deal with.

“But we’re still in it together and it was still our decision as a team, and it was still a win that we lost together. It was a difficult thing because it was my first potential win in F1, so I think even in 20 years if someone goes ‘remember Sochi?’ I’ll always remember it. Because yeah, it was a tough weekend.”

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But the fact that Norris was in that position to begin with speaks to his enduring success in 2021. He stepped up and led McLaren when it needed him to, able to present the team’s previous view when Ricciardo was relating his experience from Renault and Red Bull. Three years in he’s an established McLaren star and, after a season like the one just gone, his class is clear for the rest of F1 to see.

Norris has now established himself as a team leader at McLaren

Photo by: Alessio Morgese

Ricciardo’s tricky McLaren challenge

Daniel Ricciardo made history for McLaren in 2021, when he led what would be the only 1-2 result of the season for any team. That capped a very challenging year for the 32-year-old, who had arrived at McLaren for his second new start in three calendar years since leaving Red Bull at the end of 2018.

He was expected to lead the squad given his pedigree and previous experience, but was left trailing by Lando Norris – sometimes even humbled by the gulf between them, such as in Monaco, where Ricciardo was lapped.

Autosport's 2021 Top 50: #30 Daniel Ricciardo 

His main problem was adjusting his late-braking style to keeping the MCL35M happy at corner entry, where instability was often an issue. But he kept on working at making the situation better with regular simulator sessions at McLaren’s Woking HQ. Finally, the hard work, allied with a summer-break reset trip to his home in Los Angeles, paid off.

His upturn in form included his Monza triumph and fifth place at Austin but, despite some better performances on Saturdays, he views one-lap form as an important area to improve for 2022. That will, he feels, “give me that track position for Sunday and keep me out of a little bit more of a mess”.

Ricciardo “made a step” from where he started with McLaren, but still feels he needs “to make another one next year to get where I want to be”

This assessment is backed by Ricciardo going from 3-8 down in qualifying (based on Q1/Q2/Q3 session results) against Norris after Hungary (where Ricciardo’s chance to score a shock result went begging thanks to Lance Stroll’s calamitous error in the wake of Valtteri Bottas’s own mistake) to 6-15 by the season’s end. Being stuck in the pack contributed to his lock-up and contact with Bottas at the start in Mexico, and meant he was often trapped in DRS trains.

Ricciardo “made a step” from where he started with McLaren, but still feels he needs “to make another one next year to get where I want to be”. But an observation from Norris on his team-mate’s form should leave McLaren fans tantalised at what they can achieve together in the critical 2022 rules reset.

“He’s actually doing a very good job now,” says the Briton. “And we’re pushing each other.”

Ricciardo took McLaren's only win at Monza, but Norris achieved the higher peaks

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images