What 100 races have taught F1 about Russell, Norris and Leclerc

The stories are still essentially the same as they were in Melbourne at the 2019 Formula 1 season opener. Lando Norris is hoping to become McLaren's next world champion. George Russell is determined to prove he is Mercedes' long-term star bet. And Charles Leclerc is trying to end Ferrari's long title drought.  

At this weekend’s United States Grand Prix, all three will hit the same milestone: it’s 100 races since that weekend in Australia.  

For Norris and Russell, it marks their F1 race start century. For Leclerc, it is 100 races since he made good on his early career promise, as Ferrari’s first promoted driver from its Driver Academy. Although, technically, and assuming he makes the main event grid this weekend, that would only be the Monegasque’s 99th GP start for Ferrari after his DNS on home turf at Monaco in 2021. 

There are other subplots too: it's 100 races since Lance Stroll switched to his father’s Racing Point/Aston Martin squad. He only started 97 of them thanks to his COVID-enforced absences, plus his Singapore qualifying crash. Ahead of his expected latest return to F1 action following his Zandvoort hand injury, it’s also something of a milestone since Daniel Ricciardo first left the Red Bull fold – the Australian of course back now with AlphaTauri. 

But of the three main centurions we're assessing today, Norris arrives at Austin on a three-podium hot streak, with the potential to jump Leclerc in the drivers’ standings. They currently sit just nine points apart in sixth and seventh, with Russell four points further back in eighth. 

Norris is the only non-F1 race winner of the trio – the still, somehow, just 23-year-old also now behind his team-mate, Qatar sprint event victor, Oscar Piastri, in this regard.  

Norris is edging ever closer to Nick Heidfeld's unwanted record of the most podium finishes without a race win

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

But even as he edges towards Nick Heidfeld’s unenviable record of most F1 podiums without a victory (13, with Norris now on 11 alongside Chris Amon and one behind Stefan Johansson), Norris retains a surrounding sense of inevitability – that his time atop the podium will surely come soon. He is simply at the level of F1 winner, but his machinery has too often been lacking. 

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Looking into Norris’s approach to racing F1 cars in his 99-race stint at the top level and one sees a driver keeping their car ever at the rapid edge. It’s fast, it’s exciting – to some its Lewis Hamilton-esque. That is quite the stark comparison – and its worth remembering here that Hamilton is McLaren’s most recent world champion – but it stacks up. Watching them work a wheel is a very similar, ever moving process.  

Where Norris and Hamilton differ is that Norris’s edgy handling can see him slip into the kinds of mistakes he felt cost the chance to fight for “two pole positions” and “potentially two victories” last time out in Qatar.  

The tantalising prospect for Norris is to wonder how taking a first F1 win might help him progress to greater heights

Although he is 82 races down in terms of F1 experience, it can be seen how Piastri’s calmer driving style so helped the Australian to the excellent weekend he had in Qatar. The tantalising prospect for Norris is to wonder how taking a first F1 win might help him progress to greater heights – something his friend Max Verstappen achieved after prevailing in the 2021 world title battle. That confidence breeds calmness, while at the same time remembering that Norris still dislikes the rather recalcitrant nature McLaren’s current chassis package produces. 

As his fifth F1 season heads towards its conclusion, we can reflect on how Norris is a changed driver out of the cockpit compared to when he started. Speaking to him in the paddock you sense he’s now more guarded, but still irrepressibly eager beneath a harder shell than when he arrived aged 19. Yet he certainly wasn’t afraid to highlight the MCL60’s previous shortcomings this year, which jarred with his decision to sign a contract extension keeping him at McLaren to the end of 2025 just over a year previously.  

How Norris squares that deal with his obvious desire to achieve major F1 success – even if that means finally leaving the team that brought him into F1 and so values his racing skills (he still has the edge on Piastri in terms of race stint management, for example) – will be central to the story of his second F1 race start century.  

Russell took victory in the 2022 São Paulo Grand Prix but has endured a more difficult season this term

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Russell, now 25, is in many ways like the then 21-year-old that made his debut for Williams. Insiders from the junior teams Russell raced for before getting his F1 chance after consecutive rookie GP3 and Formula 2 wins (as Leclerc managed before him and Piastri did afterwards, rather redefining expectations for modern junior drivers) noted his determination to drive himself and those around him even at a much younger age.  

This can famously be seen even within his rookie F1 status during the second season of ‘Drive to Survive’ – when Russell lambasts Williams’ 2019 British GP practice performance during a post-session engineering debrief. Now, F1 can see that forthright confidence play out in other ways. 

PLUS: Why the reality of F1 engineering debriefs isn't what Drive to Survive makes out

Firstly, Russell remains the championship’s only currently-racing director of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association. High-profile issues that body has been a part of – such as 2022’s Jeddah missile attack, Suzuka tractors-on-track incidents or the porpoising saga – were notable for Russell being vocal on each one throughout.

That staunch self-confidence breathes through his driving style too. Watching a Russell onboard is to see a driver that makes a steering decision early and decisively, with very impressive results against the stopwatch.  

His current 9-8 non-sprint qualifying head-to-head with Hamilton attests to this. One Autosport source also recently suggested Russell’s driving style was like a “Mika Hakkinen for the current era”, with those fearless steering inputs in mind. 

As occasionally with Norris and more famously with Leclerc, Russell is, however, still making rather big errors now quite deep into his F1 career. Here, think his Canada and Singapore crashes. In the latter, a potential win had also gone begging because he still has a tendency to push the Pirelli tyres too hard, too early in a stint.  

That’s a sphere where Hamilton still has a clear advantage. But conversations with those inside Mercedes suggest Russell – having gained promotion from Williams for 2022 to finally progress from the rank of ‘junior’ for the storied manufacturer – impressed so much so early in his time with the Silver/Black Arrows that his fresh two-year contract extension announced in September was long considered a formality. 

Leclerc has scored 20 poles since his Ferrari promotion in 2019, but all too few of them have been converted into wins

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

Such a step with Ferrari still eludes Leclerc. Although, as we’ve explained in the cover feature for this week’s Autosport magazine, he is expecting contract talks over a possible extension to his five-year stint in red to properly commence over the coming off-season.  

What he hinted was possible with that stunning, car-chucking effort to make Q3 as rain fell at the 2018 Brazilian Grand Prix for Sauber has become reality – the just-turned 26-year-old has progressed into F1’s fastest qualifier.  

His 20 poles since his Ferrari promotion in 2019 to replace Kimi Raikkonen clearly prove his speed, with the Scuderia also inclined to ditch another world champion in Sebastian Vettel after seeing enough in Leclerc to sign him to his current contract just before Christmas following his first Ferrari campaign.  That he has a victory conversion percentage of those poles at just 25% with his current five triumph total comes down to two things.  

There’s a case to be made that Leclerc has lost five more Ferrari wins to the team’s various reliability and strategy issues

First, that Ferrari’s machinery has, for the majority of his time at the team, been ultimately sub-par compared to Mercedes and Red Bull – the early 2022 stint before the RB18 got lighter and Verstappen could kick on with reduced understeer notwithstanding. There’s even a case to be made that he’s lost five more Ferrari wins to the team’s various reliability and strategy issues. 

But Leclerc, while he is regularly the most exciting driver to watch simply for the Gilles Villeneuve-esque way he can fling a car around a circuit (the compliance of modern machines does, however, make this visually less stunning than with the legendary Canadian, we admit), has also too often been the master of his own downfall.  

Monaco 2021 should’ve been a crowning win on his home streets but for his qualifying crash. France 2022 was another famous victory gone begging to Leclerc pushing too hard on worn tyres just when his earlier impressive exploits had knocked Verstappen off the best strategy that day at Paul Ricard.  

Occasionally Leclerc has been the architect of his own downfall, as was the case when he crashed out while leading the 2022 French Grand Prix

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

And yet, these still stand alongside hustling, dramatic displays against the odds, such as Silverstone 2021 and Hamilton’s comeback from his Verstappen shunt penalty. And then there’s Leclerc’s endearing habit of publicly, with much swearing, owning his errors. Here he shares much with Norris and Russell in this, judging their combined time in F1 altogether, which is to each’s credit. 

If Leclerc can seal a third Ferrari contract, even a two-year deal would take him past Rubens Barrichello, Vettel, Felipe Massa and Raikkonen in the annals of his team’s long and prestigious history.  

Now an F1’s season length is nearly a quarter of a century of races at a single stroke, there is the potential for a new three-year contract to put Leclerc towards a Ferrari stay status only the great Michael Schumacher can match.

That would teach F1 much about Leclerc’s place in it, as Norris and Russell at the same time etch their names further into history. 

What can Leclerc, Norris and Russell achieve in their next 100 grands prix?

Photo by: Lionel Ng / Motorsport Images