Lando Norris has never tried to sell himself as Formula 1’s alpha predator, and he isn’t about to start now that he’s got the number one on his McLaren.
The reigning world champion arrived back at the McLaren Technology Centre ahead of the 2026 season sounding less like a driver who’s been “made” by a title and more like one who’s simply had a theory proven. He wanted to be champion on his terms; he did it; and the interesting bit, as far as he’s concerned, is what comes next.
“Honestly, no,” Norris said when asked if winning in 2025 had reset his ambitions. “I don’t feel any different coming into this season. I still feel like I just want to go out and win.”
That’s the line every champion delivers at some point in winter. The more revealing part was why he thinks the feeling hasn’t shifted. Norris talked about having a baseline now — a kind of internal insurance policy. If the rest of his career doesn’t stack titles like the greats, he’ll still have the one thing he chased for 20 years from karting: proof he could do it.
That sense of calm didn’t come from nowhere. Norris won his first championship the hard way, in a season that asked awkward questions of him right until the final weekend. He’d been close in 2024, then in 2025 he had to drag the campaign back from a mid-season wobble, chase down a 34-point deficit to Oscar Piastri, and keep his head while Max Verstappen mounted one of those late-year surges that turns every Sunday into a referendum on your nerve.
Norris arrived in Abu Dhabi needing to not lose, and he didn’t. Third place was enough, and by two points he emerged from a three-way scrap with the title.
There’s a neat symmetry to what happened next. While Norris took the crown, the paddock’s unofficial end-of-year backslapping — the sort of barometer people pretend not to care about — still leaned Verstappen’s way. Team bosses and drivers voted the Red Bull man as the standout driver, with Norris second. Even without Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies taking part, the message was clear: Norris is champion, Verstappen remains the benchmark in plenty of eyes.
Norris doesn’t seem offended by that. In fact, he’s leaning into it. Asked about multiple champions of the past and whether they’d have accepted a mentality like his — less confrontational, more self-critical — Norris didn’t try to posture. He admitted there are pieces of Verstappen he’d happily steal.
“It’s quite clear that I have a different mentality and a different approach to, say, what Max has. Good or bad, you decide,” Norris said. “There are a lot of things that I still admire about Max, and I wish I had a little bit more of that, here and there.”
That’s not hero worship; it’s a champion acknowledging the margins. Norris knows the sport has entered an era where “pretty good” gets you pole on Friday and second-guessing yourself on Sunday. His point was blunt: in a fight at the front, you’re aiming for something close to perfection, and it’s not remotely sentimental.
One area he believes he moved forward last year was mental preparation. Norris has spoken about working with a sports psychologist in 2025, framing it not as a crisis fix but as building “armoury” — a word he returned to again this winter. He talked about dealing with good weekends, bad weekends, and the unglamorous grey ones in between, without the emotional swings costing him performance.
There’s also a more personal shift he’s considering for 2026: letting people back in.
Last year, Norris said, he was “pretty strict” about who came to races. The goal was simple: eliminate distractions while trying to become world champion for the first time. Now, with that box ticked, he thinks he can be “more relaxed” about friends and family being around on race weekends, trusting that it won’t knock him off his routine.
It’s a small detail, but in modern F1 it matters. Drivers talk endlessly about “process”, yet a season is lived through airports, motorhomes, dinners you skip, messages you don’t reply to, and relationships you keep at arm’s length because you’ve convinced yourself you need to. Norris sounded like someone who’s allowing himself to adjust those settings without fear.
He did at least take a stab at a proper off-season — albeit a short one. Norris said he tried to disconnect as much as possible, spent time with friends, and kept up a yearly trip to Finland to get away from the noise. Training started earlier than in previous years, he added, but mentally he felt more relaxed.
The number one, though, has a way of pulling you back in. Norris’ first public run with it came during McLaren’s Barcelona shakedown, and he admitted the sight of it on the car, helmet and race suit brought the memories flooding back.
“That’s the reality. Finally, seeing it on something, which is cool,” he said. “So, yeah, I was smiling.”
There was a flicker of perspective, too, in how he spoke about the congratulations that landed after Abu Dhabi — particularly from other world champions. Norris became the first driver since Nico Rosberg in 2016 to break the long Lewis Hamilton/Verstappen stranglehold on titles, and he acknowledged that messages from people who’ve carried that weight mean more, precisely because they understand what it costs.
He also let slip a paddock aside: he’s been playing padel with Alex Albon and George Russell, and Russell, Norris noted, is “the bookies’ favourite” for 2026 and “a little bit giddy at the minute”. That’s the grid in a sentence — one champion trying to improve, another contender feeling the air shift under the sport’s feet.
Because 2026 isn’t just another title defence. It’s the start of a new regulatory era, and every driver knows reputations get rewritten when the technical landscape changes. Norris won 2025 by being resilient, clinical when it mattered, and just fast enough often enough. Now he has to prove he can be the constant in a season where almost everything else is new.
Still, Norris keeps returning to the same idea: whatever happens from here, he’s already at peace with what he’s achieved.
“If I never do, I’m still happy,” he said of winning another championship. “I achieved my goal in life, and I’m very happy.”
That’s not a man lowering expectations. It’s a man who knows exactly how hard it is to get one — and exactly why, now, he wants to go and get another.
