I could have won races earlier but I wanted to win with McLaren

Lando Norris says it means more to him to have achieved success with McLaren, the team that brought him into Formula 1.

The team go into today’s race with the chance to clinch their first constructors’ championship title since 1998 – the year before Norris was born. Norris, who arrived in F1 with McLaren in 2019, said he had options to join other race-winning teams, but wanted to be part of his first team’s return to competitiveness.

“There’s been some very fun years,” he said. “True, we didn’t start off great last year, but I had some great times.

“Started off with [Carlos Sainz Jnr] and we made progress, stepped back, made progress, stepped back. Nothing ever clicked, really, and never continued to grow. It was hard just to break that barrier of getting close to Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull because for such a long period of time, they’ve been the guys who have dominated Formula 1.

“Now, not only have we broken that barrier over the last year and a half, we’ve risen to the top of it and to become the best team and leading and hopefully to go on to win.”

Norris was in contention for the drivers’ championship until the 22nd round of 24, when Max Verstappen clinched the title. He said McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella deserve more credit for the progress the team has made, given Verstappen and Red Bull’s dominance over the previous two seasons.

“I don’t think, simply from the outside, people give McLaren and my team enough credit for what they’ve done, what they’ve turned around,” he said. “It’s not an easy sport. It may look simple at times from the outside and things like that. And even I think sometimes things are more simple than what they look.

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“But to go from where we were to outdo Ferrari, who have turned things around a lot over the last couple of years, and to catch Red Bull, which I’ve said a couple of times, and Max, who one year ago dominated every race – for that to flip around so much, we can only just give a hats off to the whole team.

“A lot of things have changed. People have come and gone and Andrea has done an incredible job. So to be part of this whole story, to be part of it not long after Zak joined McLaren and started changing things and making McLaren into a slightly more happy place than it was prior. I’ve been along the journey with Zak, and we’ve gone through a lot of things together, highs and lows and emotional times.”

He scored his first grand prix win with McLaren earlier this year, in his sixth season since arriving in F1. Although he believes he might have won sooner at another team, Norris said he wanted to stay loyal to McLaren.

“It definitely has been a longer rise to get to where we are, which has been fun and I’ve really loved it and I’ve enjoyed it,” he said. “The thing I’ll be proudest and most happy about is the fact I’m still here, the fact I’m still in papaya.

“Because I believed in the team for many years. I had opportunities to not be in papaya and to maybe go on and win races at an earlier stage in my career and those kind of things. I had those opportunities, but I believed and I wanted to simply do it with McLaren.

“I wanted to do it with the guys who gave me my opportunity in Formula 1. And as much as we didn’t think it was going to be possible this year, we’re hoping for next year. Next year was our kind of in-line target, on-paper target.

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“The fact we’re doing it this year is an even bigger achievement. The job’s not done, and Andrea will be happy that I say it, but I’m proud to be on this journey, to have been on it with McLaren for so many years, and I’ll be very happy when hopefully it’s all finished off.”