By Joe Murphy
As you are about to read, Lando Norris has won everywhere he has been. Apart for F1, he has been victorious everywhere. Despite not yet winning a Grand Prix at this level, there is still an extremely talented and exciting prospect sitting in that orange car, as this article will demonstrate.
Lando, as I’m sure you all know, is a British racing driver. However, you may not have known that he is actually half Belgian due to his mother being born in the country. The man with number 4 car has been an F1 driver for McLaren since 2019, although he was a junior/reserve driver for the two years prior. To date, he has 60 races under his belt consisting of 5 podiums, 1 pole position and 3 fastest laps, as well as 306 career points to date.
However, his career motorsport stretches well before these achievements. For example, he won the MSA Formula championship in 2015, and the Toyota Racing Series, Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 and Formula Renault 2.0 Northern European Cup in 2016. He also received the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award the very same year. He subsequently won the 2017 FIA Formula 3 European Championship too.
Before even this, Lando’s obsession with racing started after his father took him and his brother to watch a round of the Super 1 National Kart Championships at his local kart track. His racing career officially started at the age of seven when he claimed pole position at his first national event. 7 further years later, Norris competed in KF-Junior karting, winning the CIK FIA European Championship and the International Super Cup, as well as the WSK Euro Series. It was evident that a motor sporting star, was coming through. This was reinforced when Norris was then victorious in the CIK-FIA KF World Championship with Ricky Flynn Motorsport, making him the youngest karting world champion of all time.
It was in 2014 when the Brit made his car racing debut. He finished third in the Ginetta Juinor championship, winning four races and winning the Rookie Cup. For the next year, Norris signed with Carlin Motorsport to drive in F4. By the culmination of the season, Lando’s record boasted eight wins, ten pole positions, and fourteen total podiums as he went in to win the championship.
In 2016, Norris travelled to New Zealand to compete in the Toyota Racing Series with the M2 Competition team. He won six races and again won the championship. He then returned to Europe to race in the Formula Renault 2.0 category. His team, Josef Kaufmann Racing, were pleased to have him on board, especially, as his track record is seeming to show, as he won both the Eurocup and Northern European Cup series. This was in part to his record 10 consecutive pole positions, something no other driver has ever done at that level.
Simultaneously, Norris entered the BRDC British Formula 3 Championship taking to the top step on the podium in four out of eleven races. In October that year he made his first appearance in F3.
Norris raced full-time with Carlin in the 2017 European Formula 3 Championship and finished on the podium in twenty of the thirty races, which included nine wins. He also registered eight pole positions, to add to his already impressive résumé. He was crowbed champion of the series with two races remaining, meaning he won 5 titles in under four years.
Norris remained with Carlin for the 2018 FIA Formula 2 Championship. Lando won the opening race at the Bahrain International Circuit from pole position, however, this would prove to be his only race win of the year as he struggled throughout the year. Despite scoring consistent points and podium finishes, too many retirements meant he finished the season behind Alex Albon and, eventual winner, George Russell.
He made his debut in Formula 1 for McLaren at the 2019 Australia Grand Prix, and scored his first ever F1 points in the following race with a sixth place finish in Bahrain. As previously stated above, Lando has already achieved so much for McLaren in Formula 1, but he has many more years ahead of him in the sport, having only recently signed a 5-year deal with the Constructors. He has won everywhere he has raced, surely it’s a matter of time before he gets his first win at this level. He came agonisingly close in Russia and was only denied by the rain in his pursuit for a maiden victory.
Moreover, if he can get in the tight car setup, then surely he is a future world champion, in the making…
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