Lando Norris has received all kinds of praise from the people of the F1 fraternity after he had his best-ever season in 2024. Not only did he win his maiden race in Miami but also emerged as Max Verstappen’s biggest challenger, losing out by 63 points in the end.
Norris’ race engineer Will Joseph is the latest to praise him, having seen the 25-year-old grow from strength to strength after his Miami GP win. “He’s (Norris’) grown up massively and we’ve grown up together and our bond is based on trust,” Joseph said on the Fast and the Curious podcast.
Joseph added that when Norris first joined McLaren as a junior driver in 2017, the senior members of the team helped him settle and guided him with the workings of the side. Learning from them, today Norris has grown to become a leader himself.
“He’s now in a position where he’s sort of driving us and asking more things from us, which is what we wanted,” Joseph added. “That’s leadership”. Joseph mentioned that while he and Norris are definitely not best friends, what they have is an incredible professional relationship.
“We need to be excellent at working together, knowing what we’re both feeling, knowing what each snippet that I say on the radio means,” he further explained.
A race engineer’s relationship with any driver is indeed one of the most important relationships in this sport as it is the engineer who best understands how to relay the information to the driver and also motivate them when the chips are down.
Ideally, Joseph and Norris’ combination works well to take the next step forward and bag the British driver’s maiden championship, something he faltered to do at the first time of asking in 2024.
Norris’ next goal is to win the Drivers’ title
As ecstatic as Norris was to seal the Constructors’ Championship for McLaren by winning the season finale in Abu Dhabi, the jubilation he is likely to feel after winning the Drivers’ title will hit differently. This is because even some of the best drivers in the sport’s history have been a part of teams that have won the Constructors’ title but have never won the Drivers’ Championship themselves.
And if Norris’ flawless performance in Abu Dhabi is anything to go by, he seems prepared to fight for the Drivers’ title. The Briton himself revealed on the team radio that he expects 2025 to be his year after everything he has learned by fighting Verstappen for the championship this season.
Many experts such as Nico Rosberg and Danica Patrick have also labeled Norris the favorite to win the Drivers’ title in 2025. However, Rosberg did highlight that if Norris is to fight for the title next season, he will have to reduce his mistakes.
The 2016 F1 champion specifically pointed out Norris’ blunders in Singapore when the Briton almost crashed twice despite having a comfortable lead of over 20 seconds. The German former driver believes such mistakes are avoidable and unacceptable for any driver who wants to mount a championship challenge.
If Norris can work on ironing out these errors, he will definitely be the favorite as he has the raw pace and McLaren are expected to have the strongest package next year as well.
