After his Formula 1 world championship success, Lando Norris jokes that “from now on, it’s all downhill” – What the McLaren driver sees as the key moment in 2025
Lando Norris will start the 2026 Formula 1 season (the entire calendar at a glance) as the reigning world champion and title defender. The McLaren driver had a convincing season last year, with victories in Monaco and at his home race in Silverstone standing out in particular.
“Those are really the best successes,” Norris recalls in an interview with BBC Sport, joking: “From now on, it’s all downhill!” The 26-year-old Briton only secured the title at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, with just a two-point lead over Max Verstappen.
“I would have liked to have made it a little easier for myself and won earlier,” grinned the McLaren driver. “But it’s always more exciting when it goes down to the last race, the last few laps. It’s more exciting for everyone—especially for you guys.”
“But I’ve won races that people dream about their whole lives. These are some of the most incredible victories,” says Norris. “The lap I drove in qualifying in Monaco was probably the only other time in the last ten years that I cried a little bit because of something.”
Qualifying lap in Monaco as highlight of 2025
“Because that’s where I proved myself wrong,” adds the Brit. “That was a moment in the season when I proved myself wrong because I was going through a bad patch with results and just couldn’t deliver in qualifying.”
“Qualifying has always been my strength. When I went to the most difficult track to do a qualifying lap, I turned off my delta for the first time that weekend so I couldn’t see if I was on a better lap, a worse lap, or whatever.”
“It hasn’t been my best track in the past,” Norris recalls, although he did finish third on the podium in Monaco in 2021. “So driving that lap at the end of qualifying was, in a way, one of the best moments of my career because it was the moment when I doubted myself the most.”
“But that one lap, with a time of one minute and nine seconds, was all it took to turn everything around and change my mindset from ‘I just don’t know if I can do this’ to ‘Oh, I can definitely do this,’” Norris describes the Monaco qualifying as an important milestone of the 2025 season. “And that was a key moment for me.”
