NEW KID ON THE GRID
He’s 18, British and now he’s a McLaren driver. Lando Norris is the...
LANDo NoRRIS scratched his head when asked if he remembered Lewis Hamilton’s grand prix debut in 2007.
Too young to know! But next March, by then aged 19 — in the same place, Melbourne, in the same team, McLaren, representing the same country, Britain — Norris will follow in the wheel tracks of the defending world champion.
It was with a frisson of excitement not felt since Hamilton broke on to the world scene that McLaren confirmed yesterday that the teenager from Glastonbury, Somerset will become the youngest Brit ever to line up in a Formula one race.
I spoke to his father Adam in Monza just the other day. Pacing the nervous steps of a father watching his son in action, he removed the earphones keeping him in touch with Lando’s pit-tocar radio exchanges in Formula Two. ‘It would be a good thing for British motor racing if Lando gets the drive next year, wouldn’t it?’ he asked.
By then, he must have known that yesterday would see the confirmation of Lando’s move up. But he was sworn to secrecy, no doubt fretting about not accidentally divulging anything to cause ‘a slip twixt cup and lip’.
For Adam, a former professional cyclist who met his Belgian wife Cisca while pursuing his own sports career, the money Lando (right) will now earn in Formula one is irrelevant.
Adam is a millionaire many times over from a career in financial services.
They are a close family, far removed, financially, from Hamilton’s early upbringing on a council estate.
It is nearly impossible to make it to the top in motor racing without parental money, or, in Hamilton’s case, the lavish funding supplied by McLaren during his blossoming teenage years.
Adam could easily afford Lando’s education at the fee-paying Millfield School, hot house to a host of international sports stars, and then to fund private tuition when the demands of the track became too onerous to allow his son’s classroom education to evolve in the usual way.
Lando, who left his school mates behind, does not have a GCSE to his name, but the pit experts will attest to his engineering acumen.
My first proper meeting with Norris came last year more than 11 years after I interviewed an emerging Hamilton in the same factory, the Norman Fosterdesigned McLaren Technology Centre in woking, Surrey.
Hamilton was wearing team uniform. Norris, who is not 19
until mid November, was dressed in jeans — a sign of the times, and of a more relaxed approach within the team.
The striking thing was how polished hamilton was and how homespun Lando seemed to be. he twiddled his thumbs slightly nervously as he spoke — a genuine teenager. Though, in the car, he is as tough as carbon fibre.
hence, his stellar record to date. he won the World Karting Championships aged 14, a year younger than hamilton achieved the same feat.
Norris’s Formula Three title last year was accomplished with two races to spare.
This dazzling c.v. came as little surprise to seasoned observers, who noted one of his bravura performances in the wet at Norfolk’s Snetterton track during his ride through the ranks.
he currently lies second in Formula Two, Formula One’s feeder series, with four races remaining.
he is vying with another fabulous young British talent, George Russell, the series leader who is backed by Mercedes and expected to be elevated to a grand prix seat at Williams next season.
But there are cautionary notes amid the fanfare. For Norris’s chance comes because
Stoffel Vandoorne is being released by McLaren at the end of the year — announced yesterday — after two ordinary seasons in the top flight. Belgian Vandoorne, 26, was another starlet, but one just short of the required standard, as it proved, for a long grand prix career.
Norris will be partnered with Carlos Sainz, the 24-year- old Spaniard who is joining Britain’s most successful Formula One team from Renault.
McLaren had originally hoped to partner Sainz with Fernando Alonso, before the double world champion decided he would quit the sport in November.
They have, therefore, had to rush Norris through a year earlier than they would ideally have chosen.
Although chief executive Zak Brown is a firm believer in Norris’s abilities, he looked to bring in Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen and subsequently believed he had agreed a deal for Force India’s Mercedesbacked Esteban Ocon, only for that arrangement to founder.
A true millennial, Norris spends hours — up to 14 of them, and often beyond midnight — taking on gamers online, racing all-comers.
Now he is about to do the real thing against the best in the world’s unforgiving glare.