In tears and almost rendered speechless by the sheer weight of emotion, what winning his debut Formula One world championship meant to Lando Norris was writ large across every inch of his face. What had begun as a childhood dream and at one point this season had seemingly slipped from his grasp was, finally, a reality he clearly found hard to take in, as he sealed it with third place at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
It would have taken truly a heart of stone not to have been moved by it all as he secured the title after what has been an enormously hard‑fought season across 24 gruelling races that went to the wire at the Yas Marina Circuit.
Despite his title rivals finishing ahead of him in the race – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen winning and his McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri taking second – Norris did enough to close it out with a gutsy, nerveless drive that gave way to untrammelled emotion as his podium place was just enough to pip Verstappen to the title by two points.
“I’m not crying,” Norris said through the sobbing inside his helmet before being embraced by his equally tearful mother, Cisca, as he then tried to embrace as many of his team as he could. Twenty minutes later, as he stood on the podium as world champion, the tears were still streaming.
This was stirring stuff indeed and while Formula One can at times be a cold, technocratic sport, this was a reminder that it is very much made up of all too human participants and Norris was a popular victor, embraced enthusiastically by his fellow drivers at the end.
There were understandably moving moments at McLaren too, where tears were not being held back in the garage. As Norris becomes the 11th British driver to take a world championship it finally brought to an end McLaren’s drivers’ championship drought that stretched back to 2008 when Lewis Hamilton last won it for the team. It was 27 years since McLaren had secured the drivers’ and constructors’ double in 1998, with Mika Häkkinen the champion and David Coulthard third.
Moreover they did it after a serious wobble, having floundered at the previous two rounds, with a double disqualification in Las Vegas and then an egregious strategy call at the penultimate round in Qatar last weekend. Norris’s fourth‑place finish in that race, overtaking Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli in the final stages to gain the two points by which the British driver won the title, proved to be one of many key moments.
It marks a remarkable turnaround for the team since a nadir in the mid‑2010s, when they twice finished ninth in the constructors’ championship. It is a revival helmed by Zak Brown, the chief executive who joined in 2016, and recently by Andrea Stella, who as team principal has delivered an operationally sharp outfit with a hugely competitive car.
Norris used it to do exactly what was required of him in an enormously intense and high‑pressure contest at the Yas Marina Circuit, including making a series of bold overtakes and with flawless execution by himself and McLaren.
For the Australian Piastri – who had looked so strong in the championship leading from the fifth round in Saudi Arabia to the 20th, the Mexican GP – there was clear disappointment that he had faltered in the final third to be surpassed by his teammate, but he gave his all in Abu Dhabi.
Piastri emerges having demonstrated that he, too, is world champion material. To have been so competitive in only his third season in F1, taking seven wins, was very impressive and he feels his time is still yet to come. Brown was not the only person to predict that Piastri was a future world champion.
Verstappen, too, had been brilliant to force the fight to the wire and he did all he could in Abu Dhabi with the win but, having come back from 104 points behind in August, he just did not quite have enough to overhaul Norris and he finished only two points short, that margin the Briton had gained on the closing laps in Qatar when Antonelli ran off the track. Verstappen was not disappointed, however, feeling that he and his team had given their all in a fight to the end.
For Norris it was no little achievement for the 26-year-old driver in his seventh season in F1. He has done a hugely impressive job to stick at his task, maintain composure and belief even when under the cosh. After failing to finish at the Dutch GP with a mechanical issue, which dropped him to 34 points back, he maintained his resolve and, in the final third, regained the lead and ultimately the title with a swathe of strong finishes and victories.
The race itself did not offer the fireworks required to have turned Norris’s title charge on its head with a 12-point lead over Verstappen, but the Briton made what nonetheless must be considered a champion’s drive. He knew third would be enough after Piastri passed him with a brilliant move to go round the outside at turn nine to claim second and he held it even through the tensest moments of jeopardy when, after the first round of pit stops, he emerged in traffic.
He reacted with decisive instinct, passing Antonelli then Carlos Sainz. He then made a bravura move to dive past Lance Stroll and Liam Lawson in one swoop before catching Yuki Tsunoda. Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate was tasked with holding him up but Norris was bold. He burst up the inside, almost completely off the road as the Japanese squeezed him wide to take the place on the back straight. The incident was investigated and for several impossibly tense laps the title potentially hung in the balance, until Tsunoda was penalised and Norris exonerated.
He had made the charge vital to the title fight and in maintaining the place he held to the end it was job finally done and his childhood dream fulfilled.
While Norris became the first Briton to take the title since Hamilton last did so in 2020, the contrast in fortunes between the two could not be starker. As the young guns fought for the title Hamilton, the grand champion of the old guard, could manage only eighth place in Abu Dhabi, a dismal ending to what has been a dismal season for him.
Making his debut with Ferrari had been greeted with such enthusiasm and optimism but has yielded only what has comfortably been his worst season. He finished sixth in the championship and has failed to take a podium for the first time. He has looked jaded and disillusioned at these last few races and clearly cannot wait to reset over the winter in the hope of better things in 2026.
