Norris’ sacrifice is paying dividends
F1’s rising talent says he has swerved the teenage party scene, writes Oliver Brown
Lando Norris’ mother cried as he told her that Zak Brown, the Mclaren chief executive, had just summoned him to a meeting that began with the words: “Welcome to Formula One.”
Such was the emotional jolt at learning that her son, who left Millfield School without so much as a GCSE to his name, had been catapulted to the summit of motorsport a few weeks shy of his 19th birthday. “She’s very proud,” Norris says, smiling bashfully. “It has been a long journey, 11 years of not seeing her much.”
As he is paraded at Mclaren’s gleaming Thought Leadership Centre, Norris seems bewildered by his billing as an overnight superstar. Until he read the reports of his promotion, he did not even realise that he would be the youngest British driver ever to start an F1 race.
Although he stands to earn millions if successful with Mclaren, he admits that he has never spent more than £1,000 of
He did not even realise he would be the youngest British driver ever in F1
his own money on a single item. And as for joining the F1 glitterati with a Monte Carlo pied-a-terre, forget it. Norris fully intends to keep hold of the shared flat he rents in Guildford.
“It is better to be near Mclaren, so I can come into the factory more often,” he says. “Given the team’s current state, they are in need of more help than they ever have.”
Norris, preternaturally selfassured for a teenager, does not come across as one of life’s natural renegades. Asked about the naughtiest thing he has ever done, he comes up with no greater transgression than once stealing a sweet from a local shop.
It is often said of young prodigies that they are deprived of precious moments of normality. Norris does not dispute that he has missed out on the typical teenage experience. “I guess the biggest one is going out to parties. If I look at my friends, that is something they do a lot, whereas I don’t at all.”
There is no definitive version of how he acquired the unusual name Lando. Perhaps his mother, Cisca, believed that the second of her four children needed to stand out. So far, Norris is accomplishing that task perfectly well by himself.