The starring F1 rookie who doubted he could make it

Who will win Rookie of the Year at the Autosport Awards on Sunday? As always there are contenders from outside Formula 1, but the championship is represented by Alex Albon, George Russell and Lando Norris. All three have done sensational jobs in 2019 following graduation from Formula 2 and have further enhanced their reputations at their respective teams.

Arguably it was Norris who made the biggest strides throughout the season, and he ended it with the greater momentum.

In Abu Dhabi last weekend, he not only led the midfield qualifying battle in seventh place, but he also won the overall fight with McLaren team-mate Carlos Sainz by 11-10. To be fair, on occasion Sainz was handicapped by issues outside his control, so perhaps the more interesting statistic is that the pair were within a tenth of each other in race and qualifying conditions, according to McLaren's analysis.

Not a bad effort by Norris considering his lack of experience and the fact that many tracks were new to him. And yet at the start of 2019, the man himself was not convinced that he was up to the task.

"Coming into the season I wasn't very confident with how I was going to do," he says. "So I'm happy I kind of proved myself wrong and have done a good job, been able to give myself more confidence and improved as a driver. And I got some good results. But still a lot of things I need to improve on."

Upwardly mobile racing drivers, especially those who have fast-tracked their way to the top on the back of stellar CVs, are usually brimming with self-belief. So what kind of doubts did he harbour?

"If I was going to be good enough," he admits. "Simple as that. I didn't know if I was going to be quick enough, going up against a driver who's done four years in F1, in McLaren, and just in F1, against so many good drivers. It was simply not knowing if I was going to be able to keep up."

Nevertheless, Norris denies the suggestion that an extra year as a reserve driver would have helped his preparation.

"I think even if I did another year of testing, I would have been the same," he insists. "Just going into things you can't prepare for necessarily, the pressure of going into qualifying, the pressure of going into the race thinking about however many things.

"There's so many things you can practice, and you know [there is] pre-season testing and everything. It's still all change when you're in the moment of qualifying and the race, the pressure, it's all very different to just testing.

"Sometimes I was fast in testing and just as quick as Fernando [Alonso], or just as quick as Stoffel [Vandoorne]. And that gave me a bit of confidence. But it didn't mean anything. It didn't mean I would be going into Australia and be able to nail qualifying and then nail the race. It's so completely different. So that's why another year of testing wouldn't have changed how I thought about it."

Fear of failure is a candid admission for any racing driver to make in public, even after the fact.

"I think if I was still suffering from the same things, then I probably wouldn't have said it," he admits. "But I'm more confident - and I see more confidence in me."

"I'm glad he didn't tell us that!" jokes McLaren boss Zak Brown when told of his driver's doubts. "As a 19-year-old rookie, coming into F1 with McLaren, we kind of take for granted that these drivers come and settle in, but the amount of pressure that's on them...

Sainz finished the season way ahead in the points, by a margin of 47, but Norris had the worst luck in races over the season

"He's a breath of fresh air in that he's really honest with himself. I actually think at times he's more critical about a session or a lap than we are, and to me, that means he's constantly wanting to improve and analysing what he's doing and how he can improve.

"You can imagine some 19-year-olds might not have that discipline, and look in the mirror and might be going, 'I'm just a 19-year-old superstar in F1'. He's quite rounded."

That quest for perfection is a Norris trademark, and McLaren has been mightily impressed by the way he has approached the year, learning at every opportunity.

"You can see on Fridays how much Lando learns from Carlos, he's a sponge in that sense," says Brown. "That's where his maturity has come through. He's recognised that some of these tracks are new to him and he's not in a rush on Friday to put Carlos's time down. But come qualifying they are matched, so he has a really mature approach to the race weekend.

"They both have had their share of bad luck, and that's motor racing. I don't think the points are representative of how close they've been and how well Lando's driven."

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl watched the early races from afar before taking on his new job in May. He's been hugely impressed by his young charge.

"For Lando, as a rookie, it's clear to see that he was simply building up throughout the season," says Seidl. "He was quick straight out of the box in Melbourne. He went into his first-ever qualifying and ended up in Q3. Which proved that it was the right choice to go for him and showed what a talent he is.

"He took his time also to build up experience and then go more and more aggressive into the races. Especially the race starts, where he took it more conservative at the beginning of the season because it was important he finishes the races, just to build up experience.

"Second half of the season he got more and more aggressive for the race starts. So I would say it was a sensational rookie season. He simply was a bit unlucky with technical issues and so on that were many times in the way of big results."

Seidl is more than pleased with the Sainz/Norris combination: "Obviously the best you can have in a team is to have two drivers at such a high level. It's great to see how they battle each other, together with their car crews also in a positive way, pushing the team forward.

"These two guys are the future for this team. It's down to us to give them a quicker car to become a better team and then hopefully they can fight higher up on the grid."

Sainz finished the season way ahead in the points, by a margin of 47, but Norris had the worst luck in races over the season, either with mechanical problems or pitstop problems, such as in Mexico.

At Paul Ricard, a hydraulics problem dropped him from seventh to 10th and at Spa, it was a late loss of 'Class B' victory that proved frustrating. But Norris accepts that it was just part of the learning process.

"The first few I didn't get so annoyed about because I know it kind of happens," he says. "And then I had Spa and Paul Ricard and a few more. I got a bit more annoyed because it was happening a bit more regularly. And then I had a couple more.

"And it kind of got to the point where I was realising more it's nothing I could change, or effect, or the people around me even. It wasn't our fault, it's things that happen. And just mistakes that I made.

"The first few I was quite easily able to forgive, the next lot was frustrating - Spa was my best result. And then going to Mexico with the pitstop, it was like, this happens, I need to move on. Nothing I can do.

"So when I look back, it has affected a lot of things, points in the championship and so on, but a lot of it's been out of my control and things I can't change. It's just something I need to forget and then go into next year, something I don't need to be thinking about."

Together with his team-mate, plus fellow newcomers Seidl and technical boss James Key, Norris has played his part in changing the team for the better and raising its level. It finished 2019 fourth in the constructors' championship and best of the rest after finishing ninth in its final year with Honda power and improving to sixth with Renault in 2018.

"When you bring in two new drivers it does bring a freshness to the garage and the ability to press the reset button" Zak Brown on McLaren's 2019 line-up

"One of the biggest things that's changed is just having a fresh start, with two new drivers," Norris says. "New people within the team and new management, I guess, with Andreas coming in.

"It kind of refreshed everything, but at the same time, because the last two years have been so bad, I don't think coming into this year, for a good reason, we over-hyped as many things as in previous years.

"Always coming into Abu Dhabi everyone was so excited about how McLaren was going to do the next year because as a team, we said too many things which were making people overly confident. So we didn't do that, which was a good thing.

"People worked hard over the winter; we then started testing and we weren't super happy with how testing went. But then as the race weekends went on, then the environment and everything started coming together more and more.

"So I think there has been a lot of key things - two new drivers, new management, new people looking after everyone. Just putting everything together has made it all more enjoyable for the drivers, but also enjoyable for the team."

And that upward progress was apparent in hard results as McLaren outperformed its engine supplier Renault.

"It speaks for itself," says Norris. "Where we were last year, where we ended up in the constructors', where we were on average in qualifying and in the race. The contrast to this year has been pretty huge.

"There's been a lot of very good things, but there's still things which have not been so good and the things the team needs to improve. There's still a long way to go to be able to race with Red Bulls, Ferraris or Mercedes. So we can be happy, but not overly happy and get ahead of ourselves going into next year."

Norris is clear about what has to improve in the package for 2020: "Downforce, it's as simple as that. Downforce is always the biggest thing. And it's one of the things that has improved so much from last year.

"And it's not just having more downforce, but efficiency, the characteristics of the car. The car still needs to work in different conditions, different winds, different cornering types, different speeds.

"The car suits some tracks a lot and some tracks not at all, and it's trying to make the car suit ideally both. So characteristics of how the car works and so on is the biggest base to improve."

Their on-track performance aside, another positive is that Sainz and Norris have bonded, socialising away from the track and sharing an upbeat approach that has provided a boost for a team that had been through the mill over recent seasons.

"When you bring in two new drivers it does bring a freshness to the garage and the ability to press the reset button," says Brown. "I don't think it was necessarily needed, but I do think we benefited from having two new drivers and a lot of change in the garage that has come together pretty quickly in terms of working as a cohesive team."

It's remarkable to think that fresh from Formula Renault, Norris won the Autosport Young Driver Award just three years ago. What better inspiration for the candidates to be his successor on stage in London on Sunday evening?