The winter Norris focus that helped end his lengthy F1 win wait

“Last year I would have thought of it. But this year, I’ve been much better with just keeping my mind focused on my job. I’m doing a good job – I’m fast and I’m executing things exactly how I want to. I’ve improved on a lot of my weaknesses and all that hard work has paid off.”

It sure has: Lando Norris is now a Formula 1 race winner. Had last year’s Miami Grand Prix not been what McLaren team principal Andrea Stella described as the team’s worst event of 2023, then Norris, finding himself in a surprise winning position around the Hard Rock Stadium, might have let his mind drift dangerously back to his near-miss heartbreak of Sochi 2021.

But no. Instead, he was smiling and thinking, “How am I going to celebrate? What am I going to say?”

“I’m not very good at kind of just coming up with these things and improvising when that situation comes,” he later added. “So, I was rehearsing my lines.”

But when the time came, instead Norris pointed to his waving mechanics, saluted the crowd from his cockpit, and just whooped. In taking the chequered flag at the head of an F1 pack for the first time, he banished the cruel internet meme ‘Lando No-Wins’. And he wrote a familiar legend for Formula 1 fans, one he now shares with fellow members of the 100-races-before-winning club – such as Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg.

PLUS: Why Norris was right to use his ‘No-Wins’ haters’ goading to right a series of F1 wrongs

Last year, with fellow McLaren Autosport BRDC Young Driver of the Year Award winner George Russell and Carlos Sainz secure as F1 race winners following their stellar 2022 campaigns, Norris’s lack of a victory hadn’t gone unnoticed within McLaren. Indeed, Stella admitted to Autosport at the 2023 Las Vegas GP that Norris had felt stress in not matching his friends.

Norris at last got to celebrate an F1 victory in Miami with a performance that laid his doubters to rest

Photo by: Michael Potts / Motorsport Images

But critically, the 24-year-old had been good at coping with that and avoided transferring it to the team. “His contribution, his support to the team has always been very constructive,” Stella said at the time.

And so, after 57 laps of the Miami International Autodrome nearly two weeks ago, Norris was getting a celebratory bearhug from McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown and finally a more emotional, tender embrace with Stella. A very highly rated driver and a similarly regarded team boss had finally achieved a long-held ambition.

That ambition was one of righting a wrong, as Norris’s “finally prove those people wrong” message made clear in his inevitably effusive and energetic post-race press conference appearance. For Stella, it too laid to rest the ghosts of the 2021 Russian GP.

When you look at Norris’s 2024 season leading up to his magic Miami moment, his improvements do stand out – although things didn’t start off that way

From the close of 2023, Norris had specifically targeted an improvement in his results consistency and getting even better at tyre management as his key goals. His efforts to improve his focus solely on the driving task at hand proved to be valuable in his task.

Stella highlighted working the tyres more wisely, long a Norris strength, as an important part of his Miami triumph. But this had also been on display when he showed fine pace in dropping Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari following the safety car restart at the preceding Chinese GP. There, Norris eventually held off Red Bull’s charging Sergio Perez to finish second to Max Verstappen.

“His race management is very mature,” Stella explained after Miami. “As soon as he saw there wasn’t much to do after the first lap [thanks to Perez’s Turn 1 divebomb costing him a place], he started to save his tyres because he knew his race would come at some stage. Fast in qualifying, even sometimes pacing himself, and then very mature in the race in terms of getting the most out of the material he has.”

When you look at Norris’s 2024 season leading up to his magic Miami moment, his improvements do stand out – although things didn’t start off that way. In Bahrain he made Q3 errors that blew a possible third-place start, while in Jeddah he was outqualified by team-mate Oscar Piastri and was fortunate to get away with a suspected jumped start before bringing his tyre management gains to bear against Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes.

Even before his Miami breakthrough, Norris had showcased his outstanding talent to claim sprint pole in China

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

But Norris aced Melbourne qualifying to split the faster Ferraris, before the Maranello team’s strategy nous got Leclerc back ahead for second position behind Sainz. Then in Japan, Norris topped both Ferraris in qualifying before their lack of tyre degradation on the Suzuka track meant slipping behind them in the race to an eventual fifth place.

Norris then evoked memories of another first victory near-miss – Spa 2021 – with his wet-weather qualifying pole for the sprint race in China. In the race, his error in hanging on alongside Hamilton’s better start put him off and down the order. But the next day he recovered beautifully to register a second podium from the first five grands prix of the season.

Another key part of Norris’s 2024 story happened well before racing got under way. This was his contract extension with McLaren in January, which ties him to the team until after 2026.

When the MCL38 initially appeared in Bahrain testing and was slower than Ferrari and Mercedes – all in the wake of Red Bull – and was rather unreliable, much speculation followed about the merits of Norris’s decision to commit to McLaren for such a long time. Would he regret staying with a single team for nearly a decade at the start of his F1 career? And with Red Bull assessing Perez’s future closely even before the team’s management war broke out, might Norris actually be a candidate to race alongside his friend Verstappen?

Norris “enjoyed” this idea, although ultimately never took it seriously. But it wasn’t exactly out of the blue, given the energy drinks giant’s deep pockets (Sainz, take note when Helmut Marko claims that it can’t match Audi offers!), plus its previous attempts to sign Norris in 2018 when he raced in Formula 2 and, more speculatively, in early 2022.

What McLaren possessed was a proven track record of improvement through Norris’s time with the team. Sure, it slipped back badly in the initial switch to the ground-effect cars in 2022, but it had climbed from its 2017 Honda nadir – the year Norris first signed up as McLaren junior – to win again with Daniel Ricciardo at Monza in 2021.

Then it made considerable progress with impressive major upgrades to its 2023 challenger, going from a dismal early season to bothering Verstappen regularly come the end of the year – and even, with Piastri, beating the Red Bull in the sprint race in Qatar, a relentlessly high-speed layout. Such ground is still McLaren’s favoured territory.

McLaren has consistently improved during Norris's tenure with the team, and prior to Miami had peaked in Qatar where Piastri claimed the sprint

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

At last month’s Chinese GP, Norris was insisting that “we can [win with the] right place, right time – if we improve the car how we need to”. He reflected following his Miami victory that this was something “a lot of people doubted”. But he knew what was coming in terms of McLaren’s first major development package of the season…

Norris had the full complement of upgrades on his MCL38 in Miami. Critically, he was armed with the new sidepods and floor, which Piastri didn’t have due to the team’s manufacturing time constraints (it had initially aimed the package for Imola this weekend, before unleashing it early). Stella reckoned these meant that Norris’s car “performed a bit better than Oscar’s” in Miami as a result.

“I said at the beginning of the year we could win races,” Norris said after his victory. “A lot of people doubted that McLaren could win. They doubted that I could win. But I was confident. Deep down I knew that we had our time coming.

"It would have been a lot less likely that I won without these upgrades and without the hard work that they’ve been putting into everything"
Lando Norris

“The team have done an amazing job. We weren’t even into Q2 here last year. So now the fact we’re on top, we’ve won a race, the team have done an insane job to go from where we were to where we are now. We’ve chipped away, especially the last couple of months. There’s been a lot of hard work.

“And whenever you bring an upgrade, it’s not easy to kind of just go out and execute and just show that it’s better. But little things come together and when you have all these little bits coming together, it turns into a perfect day.

“So, of course, I have to say a big thanks to all of McLaren, everyone back in the factory, everyone that’s here, because it would have been a lot less likely that I won without these upgrades and without the hard work that they’ve been putting into everything. It’s the start. And now I’m already hungry for more. But we’ll keep our heads down. We’ll keep pushing and I’m sure we can be here a lot more often.”

The improved MCL38 was a Miami victory contender even without the massive boost that Norris received from the timing of the safety car. His pace on used medium tyres blew even Verstappen away, while his sprint qualifying times through the opening two segments had alarm bells ringing at other squads. This was what Stella called “spells of very strong performance”, before the worth of the upgrade was really confirmed in the GP.

PLUS: The three factors that mean Norris's Miami F1 win can't be cast as a safety car fluke

Norris showed enormous pace in Miami that suggested he could contend even without help from the safety car

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

But now that first F1 victory has been achieved, the question is: what can Norris and McLaren go on to achieve together? After all, both driver and team admit that the Miami win had also been a burden-shifting moment. “As much as I want to say no, it’s a yes,” Norris replied when asked whether victory after 110 GP starts was indeed a weight off his shoulders.

“Realistically, it was a weight on our shoulders as well,” Stella added. “Because we knew as soon as we made winning material available to Lando, he would have delivered. So, we felt the responsibility. And I have said that many times – that it is up to us, it is not up to Lando. But credit to Lando, he kept developing.”

What’s interesting to consider here is how the relief of victory might help Norris eliminate what he admits have been on-the-edge mistakes. It’s logical to conclude that, having ticked off such a significant career goal, a more relaxed and even more confident Norris could push on and become a complete all-rounder – a la Verstappen, Hamilton or Fernando Alonso.

But here there’s an added element of intrigue to another classic F1 tale. This is how Norris actually uses negative moments like losing a near-certain sprint race pole – in Miami, this had a massive knock-on effect of leaving him exposed to the chaos in the pack that took him out of the race – to reach his best levels. After all, he’s adamant that he won’t stop taking this approach, even if Stella had wanted him to be less hard on himself heading into 2024.

“That’s what works for me,” Norris concluded in Miami. “That’s my mindset. Everyone has their own way of doing things – their own approach, their own way that they talk to themselves and think, ‘How can I approach today? How can I go out and do the best job?’

“For me, it’s talking down at myself and kind of putting myself down, because for me that’s what works. And I’m fine with that, like I don’t need other people to be happy with it and for other people to agree with it.

“It’s what’s made me who I am and I think that’s my best way of going forward. So, I’m going to have my days when the glass is full and I can be happy and I’m proud of myself. Everyone’s going to have those days and everyone should have those days. But in order to make myself the best man, the best driver, I have my way of doing things and I stick to that.”

Will the release of pressure from Norris's first win allow him to ascend new heights?

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Norris’s F1 win near-misses

Had things gone just slightly differently, Lando Norris wouldn’t have got anywhere near Nick Heidfeld’s record of most Formula 1 podiums without winning. Interestingly they all come from 2021, and since then even Norris himself picks the 2023 Qatar Grand Prix sprint as the “one opportunity” that got away.

2021 Belgian GP

Surely not how Norris would have wanted to take his first F1 win but, had he been able to stay on the brilliant streak he’d started in a soaking Spa qualifying when he trounced 2021 championship contenders Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, he’d have scooped up a controversial ‘win’ in the washout farce. Norris had been the initial star of qualifying when most of the field switched from full wet tyres to intermediates in Q1, then kept that up in Q2.

When the rain returned ahead of Q3, Norris led the pack on the extreme wets again, but crashed hard the first time up Eau Rouge and so qualified 10th. Sebastian Vettel famously drove his Aston Martin close to the wreckage to check on Norris. The McLaren would ‘start’ 14th due to a gearbox change, which meant a pointless result when 25 had been possible.

2021 Italian GP

Two races later came what must be considered the most unlikely victory shot of this trio. Daniel Ricciardo famously led the line at Monza for what, until Miami this month, was McLaren’s most recent GP triumph. The Australian gets the plaudits but, following the safety car triggered by the Verstappen/Hamilton shunt, Norris’s pace was a tenth quicker on average. That’s even with the considerable issue of dirty air. The Briton was calling for his team-mate to speed up but, when McLaren asked him to hold station, he obliged. Norris essentially matched Ricciardo’s pace to the flag and a famous 1-2 was secured.

2021 Russian GP

In the reverse of what was to come the following day in Sochi, Norris had secured a first F1 pole in a wet-to-slicks qualifying call where Mercedes and Hamilton floundered. From there, he chased early leader Carlos Sainz and got ahead when the Ferrari’s medium tyres grained, then showed such pace on his ageing rubber that he emerged from his pitstop in the lead. By now Hamilton was his biggest threat after carving up the order, but he couldn’t find a way past Norris’s slippery – and strong on traction – McLaren. Then the rain came.

Mercedes eventually persuaded Hamilton to switch to intermediates, but McLaren, as current team boss Andrea Stella explained, “didn’t enforce the call to pit enough”, even though it could see a second burst of rain on its monitors. The miscommunication included Norris telling his race engineer Will Joseph to “shut up”, which was followed by Norris sliding off-track as Hamilton powered on to a 100th F1 win. Last week, Joseph said that Sochi defeat still “haunts me in my sleep” – Norris had led 30 of 53 laps, but came home a dejected seventh.

Victory in Miami has at last laid the ghosts of Sochi 2021 to rest

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images