Ahead of the 2025 season, McLaren’s Lando Norris knows what to do to take the drivers’ championship title from Max Verstappen’s hands this year.
Norris took second place in the World Drivers’ Championship and was within 44 points behind during the Dutchman’s 10-race winless streak. Ultimately, the reigning champion took a commanding victory in São Paulo, before clinching the title the following round in Las Vegas.
At the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, McLaren took their first constructors’ championship since 1998, serving as a consolation prize for Norris.
The goal for 2025
With McLaren holding the reigning constructors’ champion status, Norris wanted to take it further by winning the drivers’ championship in 2025.
Norris argued that the “selfish” dream is to win the drivers’ championship.
“As much as I want to win the constructors’ every single year, the selfish one is to win the drivers’ championship. You need a good team behind you, and that’s exactly what I’ve got.“
Speaking of his experience being runner-up, Norris recounted that he could “smell” the championship was within his grasp and took the hard lesson from it.
“I came close-ish last year, I was still always a bit far behind, but I could smell it. I had that feeling of like, ‘Okay, this is kind of what it’s like’. It was within reach.“
“This year, I need to fix a few things, work on some things, and come back stronger, and that’s what I’m ready to do.“
McLaren hungrier than ever
It can be tempting for athletes and teams to be complacent after winning a championship, but McLaren has “done the opposite” in 2025 according to Norris.
“That’s what can happen very easily to a lot of athletes, or anyone in the world, is once things start to go well, you can easily relax, and it can drift away from you very quickly.”
Norris stated that the team wanted to make it easy for themselves in both championships and avoid getting into trouble.
“The one thing we’ve realised as a team is now we are there we want to make it easy for ourselves. We want to keep going so that we can win easily these races and not have them as difficult as they were last year.“
“They’ve done the opposite. So the team has remained very focused. It would have been easy for all of them to get back and just go, ‘Ah, we’re good, we’ve done it now. Let’s just relax.“
“They’ve gone, ‘We want even more’, and they’ve worked even harder to try and find new things for this year. They’ve turned these expectations into positive things, into more motivation and more drive to want it again.“
