Can Lando Norris raise his level to be champion of the F1 in 2025?

The British pilot was not enough to beat Max Verstappen last year, but now it comes more experienced and with the rematch thirst

Lando Norris was born in November 1999, almost a month after that season of Formula 1 was completed and saw Ferrari crowned champion of builders, removing the scepter to McLaren. The Woking team would have to wait for the Norris pilot to be champions again in 2024.

However, unlike that 1999 in which he revalidated the Mika Hakkinen pilot championship, Lando could not be a champion-the last time McLaren took the two championships, it was in 1998. Why, if McLaren had a very competitive car, perhaps the best in general terms, Norris did not win?

I think there are three great explanations, very general and that in this text we will not detail, we will only mention:

The advantage of points that Red Bull and Max Verstappen took out in the 10 initial races: from Bahrain to Spain, Verstappen won 7 competitions, with triumphs also in the Sprint of China and Miami.
McLaren and Lando Norris errors. From bad strategies by the team, a management of the dubitative season-the internal rules may arrive too late-to the points that Norris let go either by bad starts or other competition situations that made him lose positions or even all the points, as in Austria.
Max Verstappen. Lando Norris and McLaren lost against the best pilot in the world and period. Verstappen, when he did not have the car, he knew how to contain the damage and in the last part of the season, when the Red Bull returned to a better way he took full advantage of it.

So, can Norris win in 2025?

“I have made my mistakes and, at the same time, I have learned a lot from them. So, for us, next year, we have what is needed, we have the car … I think I am a pilot good enough and that I have everything that is needed, ”recently the British pointed out for the category portal .

Indeed, Lando Norris is championship material. At 25 years and firm in one of the winning seats of the grill, he only has to believe in himself to fight once again for the title. It will be, 2025, a more tight season-or at least that is what is believed-but there is no reason to think that McLaren will not be in the Mix. And this is what we believe the organization and the pilot should do, to return to 1998:

Winning culture

Since 2016, the Zak Brown project in McLaren began. The American dedicated the following years to renew the brand, relaunch it in other motor racing series and create an environment of winners. However, in F1 more than desire to have it is needed. You have to work it. And suffer it.

You have to make the decisions that others do not dare to take, such as opting for a pilot at the right time of the year, without looking back and despite criticism. Because if you don’t do it, your rivals will. Red Bull does not tremble his pulse when putting his entire human and material arsenal at the champion. They do what they should do to win and McLaren will have to do it in 2025, at some point in the campaign.

You also have to refine every aspect of the work team: from logistics staff, to mechanics and career engineers. Brown himself must refine, mold to be cold when making difficult decisions. On the track, his trust is deposited in the efficient Andrea Stella, and perhaps it is the Italian who has to communicate to one of the pilots the hard decision that he will become the squire of his partner. And from then on they will manage, plan and decide each ‘situational play’ according to giving the best opportunity for victory or points to their pilot one. It does not seem that there is another path in an F1 2025 that is forecast as the most competitive that is remembered.

“I think we have confidence that we know how to win again and we will do it differently than we did,” Brown said for Yahoo Finance. “I think it will be even more tight than last season. I see the first four teams as tight as at the end of the year. I would not be surprised if the change we have had, so there is no reason for other teams to not have that change. ”

Lando must be that pilot one

If Norris wants the F1 championship, before beating Verstappen or Hamilton or Russell, it must make it clear that he is the best in McLaren. He did it in 2024 and although Oscar Piastri is a hopeful young promise, Lando bears hand in 2025.

It is not that Lando has defeated Oscar’s hairs in 2024. He won him with some forcefulness:

20-4 in classifications
16-8 in races
82 advantage points (the second broader advantage among the 4 winning teams, only the Verstappen-Ceco Pérez was more comfortable)

In the end: Norris 2nd in the final classifier; 4th piastri.

They are numbers that put the British as the favorite to make the internal title, a priori. These forecasts will have to assert them on the track. How many races will McLaren need before making a decision? Because that answer is complicated because it not only depends on them. If the level is as even as it is presumed, as soon as possible, better. But, that leads to the second part of the answer: as the pilots will intuit, almost from the preseason tests, which will be very tight, since from the first races they will come out with the knife between the teeth to assault the garage of the partner; The faster a pilot imposes his will on the team, the better. And guess who has those to win in this game … Yes, they guess: Max Verstappen (although George Russell would be the other pilot who should not have problems dominating his co-equipero).

In such a scenario, Lando Norris must hurry the passage and overcome with a clear forcefulness to Oscar Piestri in the first five or six races. Arriving in the middle of the campaign, even and the undecided team could be fatal again.

Avoid errors; Improve the outputs

“I have definitely uploaded to a good level this season. Obviously I have lost some things, and there have perhaps three outings this year that have made me lose one or two positions sometimes, ”said Norris for F1.com. There were not precisely three, they were more starting with the Sprint Race in China. Ok, we can accept that right in that race, even if he had kept the tip on the initial pique, it was very difficult to sustain the rhythm of the Red Bull.

But in Hungary, Piastri was the one who took the position of privilege to Lando; And it is not only about losing the number 1 at the start, it is that Norris starts mediocreously from other drawers, as in Belgium, when he started fourth and barely bend in the source (curve 1) was already seventh. So you can’t win world championships.

Fangio’s maximum (or at least the Argentine is awarded) is true: no races are won in the first round, but they can be lost (due to an reckless shock). But the points that are lost due to a neglect, or a bad adjustment or whatever in the starting piques are still painful. Let us remember Baku 2021, when Hamilton in a restart from a stop, not only lost his pique against Czech Pérez, is that he lost all positions; He was second and ended without points and the World Cup lost it for, 8 points! Not having made that mistake, Abu Dhabi would have been very different and the World Cup as well.

And speaking of bad maneuvers. Austria 2024 must leave a good lesson on how to bathe in the melee against Verstappen.

In that race Lando came from behind to move to Max, but the world champion defended himself to the extreme and won. He won because, despite being fifth after the crash, he left Norris without points, who had to withdraw. As a mitigating for the British, Lando tried to be very careful with the maneuver because he knew that there was contact, he would carry those to lose, because he was the one who had to go back on the dot score. But the lessons would be: 1. Going with everything against Verstappen, because he never leaves anything and always goes to the limit, and I am one of those who believe it must be played in the same conditions; 2. Try to be the one that carries hand in the championship points, because it just allows less commitment in the overflow maneuvers; It is the others who must decide whether or not to risk. “The point is that what is not seen from the outside are some of those moments when, if it had done certain things, we would have crashed. The people of outside have no idea what it costs and of those moments when you accept to lose a battle, and that is the case, ”said Norris.

It will be an interesting 2025 season. We anticipate that McLaren will be one of the cars to beat and that they have one of the best duplices of the grill-together with that of Ferrari-.

Lando Norris will look for his revenge, that’s safe … the rest is about to be seen.

“The following year, it will also be my year,” Lando Norris said at the end.