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After becoming Formula One world champion for the first time, Lando Norris revealed that he had enjoyed the final moments of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday by considering all the moments that had brought him to the pinnacle of the sport.
Norris was speaking the day after he won the world championship by taking third place at the Yas Marina circuit. His title rival Max Verstappen won the race but fell short of Norris by two points. The fight remained tight to the decisive last round with Norris’s McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri, who had led the championship for a large part of the season, also in the mix for the final race but who ultimately finished third.
“It was like a movie,” the 26‑year‑old said. “As much as I was trying to avoid every bump possible I was also remembering all of those moments from the very beginning, driving a go-kart for the first time ever, my first time on the track in a go-kart, the races I had, the karting world championship I won in 2014 and many different memories.
“I was watching me. I was living it but I was also watching me drive around from a bird’s-eye view and this was all within the space of a couple of minutes, through to the last seven years of McLaren and the good and bad moments of the season.”
Norris also revealed he had partied until 6am with his friends at the W hotel that overlooks the Yas Marina circuit and ended the night at a McDonald’s. “I had a sausage McMuffin. Was it the breakfast of champions? Certainly not, I regretted it straightaway.”
The Briton had to hold his nerve to see out a tense fight in Abu Dhabi and pull off some bold overtakes to ensure he claimed the third place he needed but said that at the close he was unsure how he would feel when he finally took the championship he had dreamed of winning since he was a child.
“I had no idea what to expect,” he said. “With three laps to go I was like: ‘I am getting pretty close and I’m not feeling anything yet.’ I was like: ‘Is this going to mean a lot to me?’
“Then the next lap I started having these cool flashbacks. It was like a montage of my life and going under the bridge for the final time and imagining my mum in the garage and that made me emotional.
“The best memory was when I came round the final corner and this is now from my view from my eyes inside my visor and seeing the chequered flag and that moment of lifting off and being able to cry. I want to savour that moment because that was the ‘it’ moment.”
As the 11th British driver to win the world championship he stands in illustrious company but was insistent the new-found fame, and all that is associated with it, would not change him. “From the exterior it will change my life but it won’t change me and how I live it. I really hope it doesn’t anyway. I don’t want to be that kind of person,” he said.
Norris was involved in a battle with Verstappen for the title last season, albeit coming from well behind the Dutchman and the McLaren team principal, Andrea Stella, believed this was one of the two key areas he had identified that had enabled Norris to close out his first title.
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“Definitely, there was a lot that was taken away from the quest last year, even if it didn’t go to the last race,” he said. “There were some learning points, like Austria, it was a tough one. [But] I think Lando elevated his sense of status, like: ‘I can compete with Max.’”
Norris also struggled with the car for the opening half of this season, not having the feel for the front grip he prefers and it particularly cost him in qualifying. It was a period when Piastri took the lead of the championship with a series of enormously assured drives.
The team were ultimately able to bring developments to the car around the front suspension such that Norris felt much more comfortable and Stella maintained that the way he handled the difficult period was key.
“This season there was another important turning point in my view, which is the way Lando responded to the difficulties we had at the start of the season,” he said. “It was the start of a process which was structured, holistic, it involved personal development, professional driving, racecraft.
“It makes me particularly glad that Lando could capitalise on this, because this has been something that I’ve not necessarily seen many times before in terms of the amount of work, the people involved, and the rate of development.”
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