“Whenever I didn’t do well I beat myself up a lot”- Lando Norris on his initial career days

“Whenever I didn’t do well, I beat myself up a lot”- Lando Norris opens about harsh self-treatment in his initial days in motorsport.

Lando Norris has been vocal about mental health issues and disclosed his personal struggles too, where he battled constant anxiety during his rookie season in F1.

While talking to the BBC, he has also disclosed the physical harm he imposed on himself whenever things didn’t go his way. Also discussed lack of self-confidence.

“There’s a lot of pressure, and I worried about it, and I didn’t have much, or at all, much self-confidence,” said Norris, who helped McLaren finish third in last year’s Constructors’ World Championship.

“I’d never had the belief that I could stay there for long or even get there in the first place, so whenever I didn’t do well, I beat myself up a lot over it.

“Mentally, I did struggle a lot, and it’s, of course, not the nicest thing to talk about. But the best thing is to talk [even though] it’s something you never want to do.”

Close affection with fans

Norris is super active on the game streaming website Twitch, where he maintains a close association with the fans and have also helped people who have been suffering similar emotional distress. Referring to Twitch, he said: “I’m lucky I enjoy a lot of these things. Mainly because I’m terrible at a lot of the things I try to do.

“Because you get the messages which are like ‘how do you get through this?’ Or you get the positive messages which are ‘thanks for doing this because you’ve really helped me in this area and I was struggling.

“It’s nice that you get these messages, and you can have that impact on people, and that’s something I think I’ve got much better at over the past few months.”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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