Lando Norris’ assertive victory at the 2024 Abu Dhabi GP secured McLaren their first constructors’ title win since 1998, as he fended off the challenge from Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari masterfully – but the Briton admitted he was a bit worried about the team’s championship prospects after seeing his team-mate Oscar Piastri being turned around at the first corner after the Australian was “taken out” by Max Verstappen’s optimistic lunge in the opening seconds of the grand prix.
“I’m very, very happy. Just as I’m sure everyone in the team is. Today was a very special day for all of us. It was ours to lose today and I’m sure at certain moments people thought that it was not far away from being lost,” Norris admitted. “You know, two Ferraris up there and Charles doing a great job to get back to the podium. Oscar was super unlucky. He got taken out in Turn 1. So for a minute, my heart was like, ‘oh God, it’s not looking as likely’.
“I saw in my mirrors what happened in turn one, and it definitely made me a little more nervous than what I would’ve liked. The pressure was certainly on from that point, but I knew what I was capable of.
“But if I just kept my head down and kept focused, I knew I could deliver and do what I got to do.
“But the bigger picture of us winning a championship for the first time in 26 years, you wouldn’t have thought that when you say the name McLaren. It feels wrong to say that they’ve not won a championship in 25 years (sic).”
Despite the concerns from losing a car in an “unlucky” manner from the fight since the opening meters of the race, Norris turned his focus into trying to beat Sainz’s Ferrari, in what he described was a “tricky race” in which he couldn’t definitively shake off the Spaniard in the first stint – and he even went as far as saying the Ferrari driver was probably the quickest on track during the opening segment of the race:
“I was watching the TV screens and I saw Charles [Leclerc] was P8 after lap one, so I was a little bit nervous. But I knew I just had to focus on myself, put my head down, and Carlos was never far away. I think the biggest I got the gap was to like 4.2 seconds in the first stint, and that’s not a very nice gap in my opinion. It’s a bit too close to my comfort.
“So it was still a tricky race, and I’m sure there was probably a lot more nervous people on the pit wall and in the garage, knowing what was at stake and things, and I’ve got the adrenaline of the car and focused on that. For them, they’re just sitting and watching the screens, and they have a lot more time to think about what can go wrong and all of that.
“But, yeah, a shame for Oscar. We really wanted to have a one-two today and let McLaren be on top today as a team in a race, but also for a championship, you know, and I felt quite bad for him in the beginning. It wasn’t his fault.
“But he’s had a great year, so we’ll all celebrate together. I certainly am. And we’ll have some fun.”
Reflecting on the race afterwards, Norris recalled a close moment when he rejoined from his first pit stop and had his four-second lead slashed to just over 1.5 seconds as the Ferrari tried an undercut – but pointed out how the hard tyres changed the balance of power in favour of McLaren, as it has been the case in several occasions throughout the season, their relatively better tyre management came to the fore:
“I knew he probably pushed a good amount out of the pit lane to try and get me,” said the now four-time grand prix winner. “I didn’t have the finest in lap. I started to struggle a lot with the tyres. And like Carlos said, a set of tyres and how they perform and how they work on our car is all it needed to shift from them being quicker to myself. I think in the first stint, Carlos was probably the quicker driver-car combo. Just the dirty air is painful, even at three seconds, two seconds. To do that for a whole stint and stay that close is impressive.
“So I knew that he was very fast. But the whole season, we’ve always performed better on harder tyres. So simply just changing tyres and the characteristic of a tyre changing makes for one team to be the quickest to us to be the quickest. And that’s how quickly and easily things can change. So I knew if we just executed a good pit stop, depending on how much he pushed out the box and how much he continued to push, that would decide my strategy, let’s say.”
The McLaren driver was at one point questioning what would be the best approach to introduce the tyres to the race, as he was concerned that pushing too early could be damaging to his prospects later on, as he tried to fend off the charging Ferrari – which at the time seemed to give the tyres a harder introduction:
“Do I also push to cover or do I introduce the tyres in a good way, because it was a long race ahead still. And I saw already in Turn 2 and Turn 3 a place you save the tyres that he saved immediately, which gave me some comfort and allowed me to start saving at the same time.
“So it’s a difficult one because if he would have pushed too early, he would have completely gone off a cliff and maybe so would I. But it’s very difficult to judge those kind of things at that time of race.”
Speaking of McLaren’s journey towards this title, that included some very challenging moments since the start of the ground-effect era in 2022 – especially the low at the start of 2023, when the team was the de-facto slowest for the Bahrain season opener – the Briton expressed how he is “proud” of the Woking-based squad and said the championship is the “biggest reward” for all of their hard work in recent years:
“But for me to be part of that, for Oscar to be part of it, is something we’re incredibly proud of. And delivering that for the team has put the biggest smile as possible on everyone’s face. This is the biggest reward you can give back to everyone who designs the car, builds the car, gets the partners.
“Everyone has played such a big part, so just proud. Proud is my biggest thing. Of course, I’m happy I finished the season this way, but I’m way more happy for the team than I am for myself.”
