How Norris pulled off the toughest race drive of F1 2022

“I would say quite confidently, the toughest race of my life. I struggled so much. I was very happy with myself just completing the race. Maybe it sounds easy and whatever – and people say I'm over-exaggerating – but I was in a very bad way at that point.”

It says much about the attitudes of our current society that Lando Norris feels the need to clarify exactly how awful he felt completing the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix with a bout of tonsillitis. But damn the killjoys, the constant online bores. Anyone who saw the 23-year-old or even heard him speak that weekend – a rare thing in the circumstances – understands just how tough he had it.

Overall, the 2022 season was not what Norris and his McLaren team had been expecting. It feels like another lifetime that the orange squad – with its MCL36 getting much less colourful over the year as it tried to shed weight – looked so strong and smooth in the opening Barcelona test. Brake problems at the second test turned into a slow and point-less season-opener, with McLaren’s first ground-effects challenger lacking downforce and pace overall.

Things got better, with Norris taking the only non-Red Bull/Ferrari/Mercedes podium in the wet Imola race. But that was a result gifted by Charles Leclerc’s late spin. McLaren worked on its challenger and gained pace and consistency, but it was never a contender. Only the wet Singapore race and Norris’s Abu Dhabi happy hunting ground allowed the Briton to show his qualities late on.

So, in a season when success was harder to see, it’s worth taking time on these short, dark December days to consider a time when Norris really shone in 2022. Not that it felt like a good time in the cockpit.

Heading into the Barcelona weekend, Norris began feeling unwell. Given the requirements of attending F1 races in 2022, he took COVID-19 tests that came back negative. But, after getting through the Thursday media day sounding fine but not quite right, Norris’s illness really took hold.

“I just didn't eat for three days,” he says of the time leading up to race day. “I couldn't drink for three days either.”

Racing at the Barcelona circuit required every ounce of Norris' endeavour

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

He completed Friday practice but missed most of FP2 due to car damage picked up in a costly trip across the Campsa exit kerbs, which meant McLaren had to build up its spare chassis for the rest of the weekend. Then, on Saturday, Norris was given a typical FP3 programme rather than additional running to make up for the lost time before heading into qualifying, where things were “much easier just doing one-lap runs”.

But a slip beyond track limits cost a Q3 berth – the FIA’s 2022 policy of being rigid on such transgressions coming to the fore again. Norris was initially frustrated by the situation before viewing video footage of his off in race control, after which he accepted his 11th-place starting spot for the race.

If he could race, that was.

“Sunday morning, I didn't want to race,” he explains. “But I think what always helps is a bit of adrenaline and just being in the car. It's just my comfortable place – it's what I love. But I knew how tough it was gonna be.”

"I didn't want to race. I thought I'd give it just a few laps to see what I could do. It's just so tough. You do one lap and you think, 'man, that was tough, but I've done one lap, I'll try and go for one more'" Lando Norris

Norris recognised it was his condition stopping his usual pre-race excitement and was determined to give it a go. First, he had to be cleared by McLaren’s doctor, then the team left the final decision to him.

“They were completely on board with any decision that I wanted to make,” says Norris. “So, I didn't want to race, but at the same time, I knew like, 'I just have to go out'. I didn't want to go and just not try, and just say I maybe want to get in the car [only]. I just couldn't. I couldn't ever be satisfied with myself for doing that.”

Norris’s main concern was hitting the required 100bar pressure to properly brake for Turn 1 – with a very long straight ahead of Barcelona’s main overtaking spot. And passes were possible in Spain this year, thanks to the improved racing with the new ground-effects cars. But, additionally, he and engineer Will Joseph had to come up with a plan to minimise communication.

“I could barely talk,” says Norris. “So, in terms of radio chatter to my engineer, there was a lot less and we come up with a few other things [instead], like to press the 'OK' button. And when he asked me questions, 'yes' or 'no', is [pressing] 'OK' or not. So, instead of literally having just to say a couple of words, which I struggled to do.”

Norris was visibly unwell during the weekend in Spain

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

Although the rest of his weekend media duties were cancelled, for some reason Norris still took part in the pre-race driver parade – shielding himself from the sunshine ratcheting the temperature up to 37C beneath an umbrella and sitting on the floor of the flatbed truck slowly touring the circuit. His discomfort was spotted by Lewis Hamilton, who checked on Norris – later seen bent double and retching on the grid ahead of the start.

But start he did.

“The biggest thing was mentally just being able to keep going every lap,” Norris explains, once he had navigated through the first corner braking feeling he “just felt slow with everything”.

“And, like I said, I didn't want to race. I said I wasn't going to race [for the whole distance]. I thought I'd give it just a few laps to see what I could do. It's just so tough. Like, you do one lap and you think, 'Man, that was tough, but I've done one lap, I'll try and go for one more'.

“By the time I got to lap 20, I was praying it was over. And I was like, 'I'm not even halfway through and I just have to go more'. So just, like mentally, being able to stay in it for that long, and not just go like, 'I can't do it anymore'. I feel like I did push myself quite a bit just to make sure I kept going.”

The result was impressive. While team-mate Daniel Ricciardo went backwards from ninth, struggling for pace sliding on both the softs and mediums, Norris gained ground to come home eighth – boosted by Leclerc’s retirement but with a fine, smooth drive that earned praise from his now former boss Andreas Seidl.

The hot temperatures were both curse and blessing. As well as the obvious difficulty of going racing in a confined and already stifling cockpit, the drivers were on a tyre-management task to get the Pirellis to the finish. While no easy ask, it meant this was no race-long qualifying-pace charge. But it was made all the more remarkable that Norris had missed his chance to test his tyre-saving techniques on the new-for-2022 rubber in the 49C track temperatures that had not been reached in winter testing there.

Norris finished eighth at the Spanish GP, despite his bout of tonsillitis

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

“I didn't feel like I could drive fast,” Norris concludes. “But actually, on that day, it was not such a bad thing because it was so hot you had to look after the tyres and almost have that driving style of just being gentle. Just be a bit lazy and slow with everything. It actually worked out to be quite a good thing.”

Thanks to that Q2 slide and penalty, objectively Norris couldn’t score a top mark in Autosport’s driver ratings in Spain. In fact, the way he flattered the McLaren in Jeddah, qualified so well in Australia, battled the best in Singapore and was commanding in Abu Dhabi all netted higher scores.

But perhaps Norris’s best performance of 2022 came just a week after Barcelona in Monaco, where being able to rest in his own bed aided his recovery, but he was still feeling only “95%”. In fact, Norris’s cough would continue past the Canadian race a month after he was diagnosed with tonsillitis – where he discussed his Spanish GP drive with Autosport.

There, back to his jovial self and merrily moving sofas around the McLaren hospitality tent, he could reflect on the ongoing challenges of McLaren’s season. Challenges that continued to the end and meant just missing out on fourth place in the constructors’ championship to Alpine by 14 points.

"On that day, [driving slowly] was not such a bad thing because it was so hot you had to look after the tyres and almost that driving style of just being gentle. Just be a bit lazy and slow with everything" Lando Norris

But Monaco was surely the high point. His qualifying pace and precision were brilliant on the Saturday, when eventual race winner Sergio Perez crashed, as did the ever-impressive Fernando Alonso. In the race, he produced an attacking drive once the field had switched to slicks, and was hounding George Russell’s Mercedes for fifth at the chequered flag.

In a trying season, Norris did not lose his charms – gently taking Autosport’s Matt Kew to task for the ratings he and this writer handed out over the course of the campaign during a season-closing media session in Abu Dhabi. As we know he’s a reader, we wonder how Norris will reflect on sliding two places in our F1 top 10 and six spots in our Top 50 ranking from 2021-2022.

But it’s worth remembering Norris was fighting a different game to those above him – Max Verstappen, Leclerc, Hamilton and Russell – with no championship fight or race win pursuit to consider. That reduces pressures and Ricciardo did not provide anything like a proper test of the true level of the MCL36 – not that that harmed an assessment of Norris’s season given he once again blew the Australian away.

Heading into 2023 he’s got a new Aussie to drive alongside – Oscar Piastri. For once, Norris has a young[er] pretender eyeing his position as McLaren’s star. But, for now, this represents just another chance to show his class, as he did on the sweltering, challenging, painful day in Spain.

The Briton had recovered somewhat by Monaco, but was still "not 100%"

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images