Norris is his own biggest critic, but he won the F1 world title his way

“I won it my way, Lando’s way,” said the new Formula 1 world champion as he sat in the small press conference room at Yas Marina Circuit and reflected on what he had just achieved.

As so often in these moments, at the end of a long, arduous season, when the lifetime’s dream has been achieved and the title won, there is a moment of clarity and deep reflection. That was certainly the case tonight.

I’ve been fortunate to experience 14 final-day title showdowns in my career in F1; to witness the new world champion try to articulate the emotions, efforts and setbacks that have led to this moment. I’ll never forget when Sebastian Vettel unexpectedly won the title here in 2010 and came into the interview room. His father was waiting for him and the pair embraced with such intensity you could feel the years of effort that had gone into him becoming world champion.

Lando Norris went on tonight to give an incredibly eloquent description of his feelings. Typical of a man who is extremely self-critical, who admits to being flawed, he went into detail about his shortcomings and what gave him the most satisfaction from winning the title.

“Could I have been more aggressive and got off the brakes and had a few people over? I certainly could have done and maybe I would need to do more of that in the future,” he said. “But did I need to do it this year? Is that the way I want to go racing? Is that me? It’s not.”

Norris is the world champion. At some points in the season we wondered if we would see or say those words. So did he. But despite all the doubts, including his own, Norris brought his A-game to the finale.

“Certainly at times I made some mistakes,» he added. «I made some bad judgments. I made my errors, as I’m sure every driver would admit to, but how I managed to turn all of that and have the second half of the season that I had is what makes me very proud that I’ve been able to prove myself wrong. There were those doubts that I had at the beginning of the year, and I proved myself wrong.”

Max Verstappen controlled the race as he had controlled qualifying to take his eighth win of the season. In a year where Red Bull sacked its team principal of 20 years after a series of disappointing results leading up to Silverstone, Verstappen still managed to end the season with the most poles and the most wins.

Asked a few minutes before Norris came in whether he felt that this was the best he had ever driven in F1, he said simply: “Yes.”

The Red Bull turnaround since Christian Horner was fired in July has been remarkable. Laurent Mekies and the team deserve huge credit. The way Verstappen caught up from being 104 points behind in the championship after round 15 to finish two points off the title is astonishing. One of the greatest F1 comebacks. He and the team came up just short. Today, as so often in recent years, Red Bull really needed a competitive driver in the second car to get involved and race the McLarens.

Norris’ greatest jeopardy today was at the start. McLaren surprised everyone by putting Oscar Piastri on hard tyres, while the rest of the leaders were on mediums. That signalled to Red Bull that it couldn’t consider backing the pack up, because there were too many variables to contain. When Piastri passed Norris on the first lap around the outside it looked like Norris wasn’t too concerned. It made sense for Piastri, on a reverse strategy, to sit behind Verstappen, while Norris managed his tyres in third. He had to soak up a lot of pressure from Charles Leclerc initially, but the Ferrari performance wasn’t sustained across the stints.

The reality of the race today is that Norris had no real pressure from behind. If Leclerc had more pace or Russell had been quicker, as we expected him to be, then Norris’s race would have been much more complicated.

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Andrej Isakovic / AFP via Getty Images

As it was, he managed the start well and took calculated risks in overtaking where he needed to after his pitstop. A double pass on Lance Stroll and Liam Lawson was committed and brave, then we had the controversial incident with Verstappen’s Red Bull team-mate Yuki Tsunoda, where he overtook off the track. The stewards penalised the Japanese driver for weaving and forcing Norris off. Many will dispute whether both drivers should have been penalised, but Norris carried on, oblivious that there had even been a stewards review, to clinch the title.

Norris is his own biggest critic and he was hard on himself for the poor run of form and errors in the first part of the season that allowed Piastri to build a championship lead. He reset after that, won his home grand prix and then after the summer he found his best performances in second half of the season.

Norris is the second former winner of the Autosport BRDC Young Driver Award to win the F1 world title after Jenson Button. And he is a deserving world champion.

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— The Autosport.com Team