Lando Norris: McLaren driver says 'I've proved myself wrong' after F1 championship turnaround to win 2025 drivers' title
McLaren's Lando Norris explains how he turned around the championship after he was outpaced by Oscar Piastri in the first half of the season, then suffered a major setback at Zandvoort in August with a costly retirement; Norris becomes McLaren's first champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008
Monday 8 December 2025 06:04, UK
Lando Norris says he proved himself wrong after having "doubts" earlier this year about winning the F1 Drivers' Championship.
Norris was outperformed by McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri in the first half of 2025, having gone into the season as joint-favourite for the title with Max Verstappen.
He dropped to 34 points behind Piastri after August's Dutch Grand Prix as he suffered an oil leak but fought back by beating the Australian over the next six race weekends to retake the championship lead in October and held onto that advantage until the end of Sunday's race in Abu Dhabi, winning his maiden title by two points from Verstappen and Piastri by 13 points.
- Lando Norris wins first F1 world title in Abu Dhabi decider
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"Winning the first race in Australia certainly gave me a big boost. But quite quickly I had, not the best run of results, and Oscar did an incredible job, was consistently ahead of me and I had some trickier times," explained Norris.
"At the end of the day, it shows that just consistency over a year is what helps achieve what we've achieved today [in Abu Dhabi]. Those tricky moments, like everyone says, you got to learn from them, you've got to acknowledge them, you've got to understand it."
"I've had to go above and beyond in terms of expanding my group, expanding the people that I work with on the track and more so off the track, the amount of people that I have in my corner, not from McLaren, but externally, my friends, my family, my coaches, people that helped me think in better ways and perform in better ways."
Norris, who is Britain's 11th F1 world champion, says many people allowed him to "be more calm" and "not acknowledge pressure" in the second half of the season.
He continued: "If I look back on it, my first half of the season, not the most impressive, certainly times I made some mistakes, I made some bad judgments, I made my errors, as I'm sure every driver would admit to, but how I managed to turn all of that (around) and have the second half of the season that I had is what makes me very proud that I've been able to prove myself wrong.
"There were those doubts that I had in the beginning of the year, and I proved myself wrong, and that's something that makes me very happy.
"Like I said, this was a moment that I got to thank them all for that, all their hard work, all the stuff that other people do for me. This is my way of saying thank you."
Norris: Zandvoort retirement didn't allow me to relax
Norris' low point came at the Dutch Grand Prix when he sat alone on the grassy Zandvoort banks following his retirement when running in second as Piastri dominated the race.
The 26-year-old says the moment "did not allow me to relax" but forced him to "work harder" to mount a championship fight back.
"When I see 34 points against a guy who's in the same car, who's doing an incredible job, who I know is incredibly quick, that didn't fill me with confidence," he said.
"It wasn't like, 'ah, I have got nothing to lose now, I can just go'. I felt like I was trying to do everything I could before, and I continued to try and do everything I could after,
"I just had to step up what I was doing away from the track, in terms of the people I was working with. I added more people to that to that group.
"I had to work harder, both on the simulator, both here at track. I had to change my approaches. I had to change my style of driving.
"I just had to, like a lot of people do, dig deep and try and understand more things quicker and in a more advanced way than I ever have before."
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