McLaren has staked its F1 future on Lando Norris – not vice versa

Relatively carefree – at least when not berating himself for losing 0.001sec in qualifying – always with a quip and devastating on track, the McLaren man would be highly popular in any era of grand prix racing.

Now however, more than any other driver, Norris is fully immersed in the online culture via which the youngest and newest fans now largely enter the sport.

A prolific Twitch streamer – playing computer games live via video link – for some time, the 104-grand prix ‘veteran’ has had his own video game team ‘Quadrant’ (a play on his racing No4), which serves to build his brand further.

Brown actually ‘managed’ Norris before he became CEO of McLaren, as a partner in the ADD group which has largely overseen the Brit’s career. When the Californian took over at the MTC, he knew which driver he wanted in the car.

This all makes him the dream date for potential McLaren partners, but it wouldn’t be happening if Norris couldn’t deliver on track – which he has done and then some.

As team-mate to the already-experienced Carlos Sainz, Norris acquitted himself very well in his first season of F1 by scoring points 11 times in 2019.

He then improved on this immediately by seizing his debut podium at the first race of the delayed 2020 season in Austria with a brilliant all-or-nothing last lap to get within Lewis Hamilton’s 5sec time penalty.

After finishing ninth in the the 2020 championship, the next season saw four top-threes come his way, the highlight being a second place to team-mate Daniel Ricciardo at Monza as the team won its first race in nine years. Norris was told to hold station behind the Australian; it was a race he very likely could have won for himself.

He also dominated Spa qualifying before crashing out heavily and led most of that year’s Russian GP until a late spin saw him lose out to Lewis Hamilton.

Though 2022 wasn’t quite as fruitful, with McLaren struggling to get used to a new ruleset, Norris was still dependable, netting a podium and points in all but five of the 21 races on his way to seventh in the championship.

Meanwhile, Ricciardo was nowhere. The Australian’s struggles with the car, the seven-time GP winner unable to hold a light to Norris, eventually led to him leaving at the end of 2022.

The final point is crucial in McLaren doing all it can to retain the Brit.

Throughout his tenure it’s widely accepted the car has been one of the most difficult to drive on the F1 grid. Norris has managed to wrestle not just decent results, but very good ones, out of a particularly noncompliant prototype.

“You have to drive it quite one way,” he said last year. “But it’s also a way that I don’t want to drive, or like to drive.

“I want to be able to carry minimum speed and to ‘U’ a corner. And the last thing I can do in the world now is ‘U’ a corner. I have to ‘V’ the corner more than ever, and I’ve never been the biggest fan of doing that.

“Same as last year, even when Daniel [Ricciardo] was driving, we had a lot of similar comments, every day, every weekend.”

It’s no exaggeration to say that, at least through 2021 and 2022 – plus a lesser degree 2023 – that Norris has therefore carried McLaren.

All of the efforts of those technical minds at the factory, and all of Brown and his commercial team’s efforts to get strong partners in place, would have been wasted if there wasn’t a driver there who could get good finishes out of a very tricky car.

Imagine if McLaren hadn’t had Norris these last few seasons? It’s resurgence wouldn’t quite have had the same rosy glow to it. In fact, it might not have been a resurgence at all.

His new team-mate Oscar Piastri has strongly impressed this year, his sprint pole and win in Qatar making it probably the best rookie season since Lewis Hamilton almost 17 years ago.

The difference between the two McLaren colleagues this season has been marked by tyre management though. While the Australian has often had searing pace in qualifying, on more than one occasion he has fallen away in the race, unable to look after his Pirellis, allowing the experienced team-mate to just pull away on race day.

Norris has never had this tyre issue. Had he began his career with this car, the results might have been even better than Piastri’s.

That Norris is so good at getting difficult cars to go fast is likely to have fuelled Red Bull’s longterm interest in him too.

It is also known for producing machines which are quick but very difficult to drive – Alex Albon said you only had to “blow” on the car to make it turn – Max Verstappen being the one driver who could handle the none-more-pointy Red Bull.

With other teams edging closer to it, the Milton Keynes squad would likely want two, rather than one, driver that can get the best out of its idiosyncratic Adrian Newey creation.

All the more reason for McLaren to hang on to Norris, then. He’ll be racing in papaya for at least a few more years to come.