As of this week, Lando Norris can call himself an F1 race winner. It took the McLaren driver 110 races, but he finally managed to get his first victory. It had been a long time coming for him though.
It had been a long and hard road for Lando Norris, getting to the point where he can call himself a Formula 1 race winner. When he joined McLaren in 2019, the once so mighty team had made a terrible fall from grace. Just two years prior, the team had finished in 9th place among the constructors. The team was on a clear upwards trajectory though, and the year prior Norris had been able to study under the wings of Fernando Alonso. Norris himself was brought in with great expectations: the young driver from Bristol had won the title in almost every junior championship he participated in and only just finished second behind George Russell in Formula 2.
That first season, McLaren managed to get 4th in the standings and Norris’s teammate Carlos Sainz even got a podium out of it. Norris himself would finish 11th. Not great, but a lot better than where the team used to be. And even in that first season, there were a lot of signs of the talent he was professed to have. He outqualified his much more experienced teammate in eleven of the twenty one races. He was running in fifth place during the Belgian and Japanese Grands Prix. He was looking to finish in seventh in Mexico and France, bringing in valuable points. But all those races also showcased something else that has defined Norris’s F1 career: terrible luck. He suffered a power failure in Belgium, Alexander Albon crashed into him in Japan, a botched pitstop killed his race in Mexico and hydraulic issues took him out in France.
But the first race of 2020 immediately reminded us why he was such a promising driver. In the final stages, Norris managed to set the fastest lap to close the gap to Lewis Hamilton in front of him. Hamilton had a five second time penalty, and that one lap by Norris closed the gap to 4.8 seconds, earning Norris his first ever podium in only his second season of F1. Between then and now, Norris recorded 14 more podiums and would prove himself to be a world class driver even as McLaren had very mixed results.
"It was always when, not if."
~George Russell responding to Norris's first victory.
A career of near misses
But the reason this first victory feels so good, is because Norris’s career had been one of almost-hits. At Monza 2021, title contenders Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton took each other out, leaving the McLarens of Norris and Daniel Ricciardo to run in first and second. And despite Norris having the pace and having carried the team the whole season already, it was Ricciardo who by sheer coincidence was in front. The team ordered them to hold position, granting the win to Ricciardo even though it could have just as easily been Norris. The next race in Russia, Norris had played the game expertly to lead the race, but then the rain fell down leaving him with the impossible decision of either sacrificing the lead to change to intermediate tyres, thereby possibly losing too much time and not being able to recover, or to stay out and risk the track getting too wet for the slicks and lose the lead anyway. He chose the second, which we now know was the wrong call.
At the 2023 British Grand Prix, Norris actually managed to overtake Verstappen for the lead and drove in first for a few laps before ultimately losing out to Verstappen. He stayed ahead of the other Red Bull in Hungary, finishing in second again. He led most of the United States Grand Prix, though once again lost out to Verstappen and Hamilton. He even had a decent shot at victory in Singapore, with Verstappen unable to keep up. Norris kept within a second of Sainz for most of the race but never quite managed to pass him, leaving Sainz the winner.
It’s a long list of near misses, and by this point Norris had actually racked up the record for most podiums without a win. It felt a long time coming and his victory at Miami this weekend felt more than deserved because of it.