First off, I’m not going to diagnose the state of the internet (or the world) or claim that I know better than “most” people. There’s a temptation to do that on a day like today, of course, but I promised myself I wouldn’t give in to it – and I’m gonna keep that promise as best I can. I’m also gonna try to keep this short.
I started out watching F1 in the same way that many others did: watching Netflix’s “Drive to Survive” on a friend’s recommendation (thank you, Joey). The show is not perfect. Nothing is. Still, it delivered me an awesome new sport and my first, favorite driver: Dani Ricciardo. It felt impossible to me that anyone could watch F1 and not love Dani Ricciardo. He was always laughing. Always smiling. He had a joke primed for every situation. In what now feels like a footnote, it’s important to say that he was also not a great driver. He was never on the level of Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen, but he was nonetheless a multi-race winner and a master of unexpected overtakes on track.
In 2021, Ricciardo made a move to Mclaren, where he would now drive alongside a younger, less experienced driver: Lando Norris. This is when I learned that F1 is a weird sport. Within a single team, you are forced to pick your “favorite” between two drivers, since they’re always at odds with one another. So naturally, as a fan of Dani, I didn’t much care for Lando.
Time passed. A couple seasons went by. Dani struggled for most of them, and Lando outperformed him at almost every race (much to my chagrin). It got so bad that Mclaren decided to part ways with Dani, paying him millions to NOT race for them. Dani would stick around the sport for the following year, earning drives with the secondary RedBull team, but he would eventually lose his seat, there, too (despite driving quite well, I felt). I was heartbroken. We all were. Dani Ricciardo made everyone smile, and now, he was gone.
In 2024, I watched F1 for the first time without a favorite driver. It felt empty watching races without a someone to cheer for. There were teams to cheer for, of course: Ferrari, Mercedes, RedBull, and the aforementioned Mclaren, to name a few, but I didn’t like cheering for teams. In a sport made special by its individual drivers, the teams were merely engines to me (pun intended). Still, I watched anyway, and sometime during that 2024 season, I began to lean towards a new favorite driver… I know the timing and title of this write-up spoils the who, but you should know at the time that my new favorite was not who I expected it to be. He was the once-rival of my first, favorite driver, after all.
Lando Norris had grown on me. He does that to everyone, I think. Or at least, I thought.
He wasn’t the fastest, or the funniest, or even very cool at all, but there was still something about him that I couldn’t help but love. Part of it was way he exuded gratitude. Part of it was the way he spoke about, and to, his team. I don’t just the mean his driver teammate and team principal, either. I mean his mechanics, all of them, and his race engineer, and pretty much everyone he interacted with. Call it cheesy, simpy, preachy, or whatever you’d like, but it became clear to me that Lando Norris was someone who cared about other people’s feelings.
He was also imperfect. He was emotional. He would share his frustrations in interviews. He would mope after his own poor performances. Per most fans I’ve talked to, and social media threads everywhere, F1 fans did not like Lando. They thought he was… well, I’m not really sure, and I don’t want to speak for them, but per a wealth of comments online: he’s soft, he’s a brat, he’s weak-minded, he makes too many mistakes, he’s always complaining, he let’s things get to him too easily, he wears his heart on his sleeve… he cares too much. The last one bears repeating.
He cares too much.
About winning.
About being perfect.
About what other people think.
About saying the right thing.
About having said the wrong thing.
About the mistakes he makes.
In driving.
In life.
In a sport that demands, and ultimately rewards stoicism, Lando gives his best effort at honesty, for better or for worse. In a sport that stokes the fires at the sight of a rivalry, Lando remains friendly with all of his closest competitors, even with the championship on the line. In a sport that asks its drivers to be inhuman in order to win, Lando Norris refused – and did it, anyway.
Today, there is a new world champion of F1. In his first interview, he was asked what was going through his head as he approached the finish line that would make him a world champion:
“I thought of my mum and then I started to tear up a little bit and then I came around the last corner and that was the first moment… (when) everything just sinks (in). And honestly I wish I could just play it on a video, or… get everyone to feel the same thing.”
That’s why Lando Norris is my second, favorite F1 driver.
I hope one day he can be your favorite, too.
/// thanks for reading ///