IN the ruthless sport of Formula One, nice guys do not often come first.
But British driver Lando Norris is aiming to change all that when the final race of the season takes place this weekend.
The 26-year-old is very much a Gen Z racer, preferring to be kind about his rivals as well as admitting his errors and talking about his mental health struggles.
But make no mistake, he is no snowflake.
So far, the McLaren driver has stood up to the boo-boys, as well as trolls calling him “Lando No Wins” and critics saying he only made it thanks to his dad’s millions.
This Sunday in Abu Dhabi, he could beat the current title-holder — the arguably more privileged Max Verstappen — to become F1 world champion.
Britain’s last champ was Lewis Hamilton in 2020 — when he clinched his record-equalling seventh title — so Somerset lad Lando has got pretty big boots to fill.
And he will have to do it in a three-way fight in the desert, as Verstappen and Lando’s team-mate Oscar Piastri are still in with a shout.
Lando has come a long way to be in this position, but not without a few bumps in the road.
In 2022, he announced he had split from his girlfriend, Portuguese model Luisinha Oliveira, after he was caught inviting another model — later revealed as Randi Hartman — on a McDonald’s date.
When his flirty messages ended up online, Lando privately pleaded to Randi “please delete them haha” before writing a gushing post about Luisinha, saying they had decided to break up after eight months.
He has also been romantically linked to Ukrainian model Katerina Berezhna and then in May 2023, he was spotted with yet another Portuguese model, Margarida Corceiro.
‘Given up booze’
They split in August 2024 so that he could focus on F1 — but now they are officially back together.
And in April last year he was celebrating King’s Day in Amsterdam with DJ Martin Garrix, when he cut his nose drinking from a broken glass.
But this was also the turning point when he put his Lando “No Wins” tag behind him and started to look like a serious contender.
Since then he has given up booze and stayed off social media to dedicate all his time to the sport.
That total focus on 200mph fin-to-fin racing where every tenth of a second counts could make him Britain’s 11th champion.
Lando, from Glastonbury, was the youngest ever British Grand Prix driver when he made his F1 debut aged 19. He has the talent, but does he have the mentality?
This season he said: “I want to win a championship. I’d rather just be a good person and try to do well.
“I’ll do whatever I can to win a championship but maybe I won’t sacrifice in my life as much as some others, in terms of who I am as a person and have the ‘f*** you’ mentality people say you’ve got to have.
“I still believe I can be a world champion but doing it by being a nice guy.”
This year, though, has undoubtedly toughened him up.
Lando has described himself as a friend of Red Bull driver Verstappen, with the pair socialising off the track.
But they have shared less-than-cordial words over the past few months as they vie for top spot.
In October Lando said that Max had been “born into an F1 seat” because the Dutchman’s dad Jos raced more than a hundred times in the sport.
Lando’s family has no such history in the high-octane pursuit — but they have plenty of money, with the wannabe champion’s dad Adam making a £200million fortune in insurance.
Adam founded company Pensions Direct, which was later acquired by Hargreaves Lansdown. He became a managing director at the firm aged 33 and retired at 36.
Lando got his first go-kart aged seven, and soon there was no looking back.
I’ll do whatever I can to win a championship but maybe I won’t sacrifice in my life as much as some others, in terms of who I am as a person and have the ‘f*** you’ mentality people say you’ve got to have.
Lando Norris
His dad got him a manager and coach from the age of 12 and fellow racers remember him arriving at Brands Hatch race track a couple of years later in a helicopter.
In 2014 he became the youngest FIA Karting World Champion aged 14 and in the same year got into real racing cars in the Ginetta Junior Championship.
That level requires a lot of financial backing and it is estimated his dad put half a million into making sure Lando had as much time to train on racing tracks as he needed.
A rival racing team boss, Steven Hunter, who saw Lando race in the early days, said: “Lando cried an awful lot at first when he didn’t win. But credit where it’s due, he was always a very hard worker.
“My honest opinion is the financial situation of Lando’s father is overshadowing his natural ability.
“One bit that everybody seems to forget is the level of understanding that’s required. Intelligence is a massive part of being a racing driver.”
There are plenty of other F1 racers who have had even more money behind them than Lando and have not become champions.
That includes Canadian Lance Stroll whose billionaire father owns the Aston Martin team he races in.
James Kellett, who finished ahead of Lando in the 2014 Ginetta season, said: “Norris’s luck was that he had the money as well as the talent.
“He has an older brother, he had the same advantages but he didn’t have the same talent or work ethic.”
Lando left a £40,000-a-year education at Millfield School without any GCSEs to pursue his dream, having won the MSA Formula (F4) championship when he was 15.
McLaren then signed him as an 18-year-old in 2019. Lando lived in a mansion close to the British team’s headquarters in Woking, Surrey, so he could spend as much time understanding the car as possible.
Connor Mills, 28, from Upminster in Essex, had the better of Lando when they raced karts together, beating him to the 2012 Mini Max British karting championship.
Connor said that Lando was every bit the “nice guy” he claims to be.
He recalled: “I was more aggressive than him. We were rivals that year. It was me and him winning everything.
“He was a nice boy, he was polite. He kept himself to himself. His family were lovely. He was always good but he had the money to support him.”
Lando was out on the track practising four or five days a week, while Connor was racing on a “shoestring”.
He said: “Lando arrived in a helicopter. But if he becomes world champion, his dad Adam’s investment was worth it.”
‘Crazy life’
Connor is now a multi-trade engineer and occasionally races in the Legends Series.
He said: “I ran out of money. When you get to Formula 4 it’s not about how good you were in karts, it’s about the size of your bank balance.”
In May last year Lando finally showed winner’s instinct by topping the podium in a Grand Prix on his 110th attempt — winning praise from US President Donald Trump.
And in an incredible turnaround, Lando ended the 2024 F1 season second in the drivers’ table behind Verstappen.
Nice guy Lando was now the man the four-time champion feared.
His focus had paid off, but he could no longer be apart from Margarida. And when this season started in March he had got back together with the model, who was a contestant on the Portuguese version of Dancing With The Stars in 2020.
Margarida is often spotted in the pit lane, but she said: “I don’t know anything about cars. I’m good for nothing other than supporting someone.”
In a recent interview with Vogue, Lando revealed that the couple had grown close over the past few months.
He said: “We met a few years ago, but we were never really together until more recently.
“She’s someone I can very much be myself with. Very down to earth and she lives quite a crazy life as well.
“It’s nice when we can both just get a boat for the day or go home together and chill.”
Lando has certainly needed some down time this season, with the pressure on like never before.
He has found himself being booed by fans, who think that
McLaren favour the Briton over his Australian team-mate Piastri.
Lando, though, claims the flak doesn’t bother him. He said: “I can’t stop laughing. It makes it more entertaining for me. So yeah, they can keep doing it if they want.”
The truth is that both drivers have been asked to move aside for the other and McLaren team boss Zak Brown wants them to be on a level playing field.
Brown even said he does not mind if they “swap paint”, although Lando apologised when he clipped Oscar in the Canadian Grand Prix in June.
The Australian came through unscathed, while the Brit wrecked his car. Lando said: “Rule number one is not to make contact with your team-mate, and that’s what I did.”
The pair are said not to socialise, but get on OK as colleagues.
Rule number one is not to make contact with your team-mate, and that’s what I did.
Lando Norris
The opposite is true of Max who goes out for drinks with Lando, yet gives him a hard time in the Press.
Verstappen claimed he would have won this season’s title by now if he was in a McLaren rather than his slower Red Bull car.
But Lando responded: “This is Red Bull’s way of going about things, this kind of aggressive nature, just talking nonsense a lot of the time.”
The question is whether the Dutchman’s mind games will get to the British driver in the final race of the season.
Lando has admitted to struggling with the pressure in his first season, saying he was “feeling depressed a lot of the time, that if I have a bad weekend I just think, I’m not good enough and things like that”.
Now, though, he is seeing a sports psychologist and has demonstrated he can overcome setbacks.
At the start of the season Piastri was the title leader, but Lando has grown more confident.
Now he only has to finish third in Abu Dhabi to win the title.
And even though he failed to wrap up the championship last week in Qatar, he remains positive.
He said: “I’ve put myself in this position, I’m still happy.”
