Lando Norris clinched the 2025 championship by just 2 points, making him the 35th F1 Drivers’ World Champion.
The Brit was just a 19-year-old driver when he joined the grid in 2019 with McLaren F1 was touted to be a kid with immense potential. He stayed with the Woking outfit through their hills and valleys and his loyalty for 7 years has rewarded him with the elusive drivers’ title.
McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella offers insight into Lando Norris’s evolution, pinpointing specific moments that catalysed him from a young prodigy to a championship-calibre competitor.
A three-way brawl for the title in 2025
2025 marked a first in F1’s 75-year history: three drivers smashing through the 400-point barrier. It was a testament not only to the title contenders but to the sheer depth of talent across today’s grid. Before diving into Lando Norris’ evolution, Andrea Stella was quick to highlight it.
In his post-race print media session, he said:
“The level of Formula One drivers nowadays is so high that you cannot succeed. And for clarity, when we talk about succeeding, it’s so close even in the classification. And even between Lando and Oscar, they are two worthwhile champions and it was a matter of a few points in the end when you scored more than 400 points.
He added, “But to compete at this level, the only way to stay in the quest is to keep evolving continuously.”
As Andrea Stella noted, Lando Norris grew with the season, which was one of the most competitive campaigns modern F1 has seen. For the first time since 2010, we’ve seen a genuine three-way title fight, and all three drivers have shown remarkable skill and consistency throughout the year.
The season-long scrap saw both McLaren drivers, Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, push for the crown while Max Verstappen mounted an early challenge which dipped mid-season before roaring back to life from Monza.
‘Structured and holistic’ learnings from the 2024 title battle
Six races into 2024, Norris’ maiden F1 win in Miami thrust him into a title fight with Verstappen, this time with the stronger car beneath him. Their clash in Austria brought home a hard truth that beating a reigning champion requires a different kind of steel.
But Verstappen wasn’t the only hurdle. Costly mistakes in Spain, Canada, and Britain exposed moments of fragility. By season’s end, though, Norris had reached a defining clarity that he truly had the ability to compete at the very top.
Stella spoke about the learnings from the 2024 F1 title battle saying, “If I look at Lando, definitely there was a lot that was taken away from the quest last year, even if it didn’t go to the last race. I think Lando elevated his sense of, almost his status, like I can compete with Max.”
While Norris lost the title with 62 points in the end, Stella mentioned that there were a lot of things to learn from his maiden title push. He said:
“There were some learning points, like Austria, it was a tough one. But this season there was another important turning point in my view, which is the way Lando, and we talk specifically about him for a moment, responded to the difficulties we had at the start of the season.
The McLaren team principal shared that “There was the start of a process which was structured, holistic, involving personal development, professional driving, racecraft.”
The winter awakening and onto 2025
Coming off of his first title fight, entering F1 2025, Norris described himself as being in the most confident state he’d ever experienced, both in himself and his team.
In Stella words, “I think it makes me particularly glad that Lando could capitalise on this, because this has been something that not necessarily I’ve seen many times before.”
Despite opening with victory in Australia, teammate Oscar Piastri consistently outperformed him through the opening rounds. By Zandvoort in August, Norris trailed Piastri by 34 points, a crushing position for someone considered championship favourite.
His retirement whilst running second at Zandvoort represented the season’s nadir. Watching Piastri dominate from the trackside banks, Norris later reflected this moment forced him to work harder rather than surrender and clawed back the deficit with 9 races to go. He was also let down by his team twice in this period, in Vegas and in Qatar, despite that neither he nor Piastri complained about it which stella acknowledged as one of the best qualities.
He said: “In terms of the amount of work, the people involved, and the rate of development. So I think this has made Lando even capable, and this again is valid for both our drivers, of absorbing a couple of tough moments.
“Like when we needed to tell the drivers that we got disqualified, that was tough, because they had done the job, but we had not. And they lost a lot of points. And in a similar way, absorbing the fact that in Qatar we had a moment where we could have done better, but we never pointed the finger at the team.”
Stella shares he is proud of how both Piastri and Norris have grown
McLaren F1 have played the fair game throughout the season and while it came back to dent their title campaign, neither drivers complained on how their team has treated them. Stella shares that this growth has been very positive and is something they all are very proud of. Piastri too shared that 2025 was a learning curve.
“There’s so many aspects on which both drivers have grown, and especially this constant support to the team, not only is the one that makes me most proud of our two guys, but I think it’s also the most important for the overall success.”
As McLaren look ahead, both Piastri and Norris will be entering their fourth and eighth seasons respectively. 2026 will see a more rounded version of both the drivers and Stella believes that their growth has been monumental in the team’s success. McLaren will run the number 1 garage for the first time since Ayrton Senna did in 1991.
That progress has translated into hard results. McLaren have now secured back-to-back Constructors’ Championships, their first consecutive titles since their dominant four-year streak from 1988 to 1991. And with Norris clinching the 2025 Drivers’ Championship, the team also celebrates its first world champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.
