There are two sides to Lando Norris’s public perception. One facet comprises the girls who hold banners at circuits across the world offering him undying love.
He is, as Vogue describe him in their September issue, ‘the 25-year-old TikTok heartthrob’, if you can stomach such Jilly Cooper raciness on a Saturday morning.
He is also a considerable sportsman and venerated for being such. Rightly so: he is 31 points off the Formula One world championship summit and in his dreams will end the year having beaten his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri to the title.
That is Lando the Lauded.
He endured the other end of the spectrum at Monza a fortnight ago. He was booed on the podium, for the first time.
It was understandable, too. McLaren had exhibited a surfeit of ‘fairness’ in telling Piastri to cede his place back to Norris. The British driver had suffered a laggardly pit stop and Piastri moved ahead of him, behind winner Max Verstappen.
Lando Norris enters the Azerbaijan Grand Prix this weekend trailing his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri by 31 points in the drivers’ championship
Norris (furthest right) was booed on the Monza podium a fortnight ago after his team told Piastri to let the Brit back through following a botched pit stop
Swap duly executed, Norris was gifted second spot and Piastri condemned to third. Their respective performances over the weekend indicated this was deserved on one level, but why overturn the pit stop’s intervention, overriding fate on a whim?
That is why Norris was jeered. Piastri did not appreciate his treatment and stamped his feet just enough for the floorboards at McLaren to creak. Point made.
Norris likes some of the trappings of fame, of which his involvement in the pro-am golf at Wentworth last weekend, alongside US Open champion from 2022 and Ryder Cup man Matt Fitzpatrick, was an example. He has Richard Mille watches, courtesy of their McLaren sponsorship, and an expanding garage of supercars in Monaco. There is also his model girlfriend, 22-year-old Magui Corceiro, from Santarem, in Portugal, above the Tagus River, not far from Lisbon.
For all the glamour, and the bits he relishes about his status, aided by a well-off beginning in Bristol, a son of multi-millionaire businessman Adam, you sense a vulnerability, a boyishness about Norris. His nature most likely will cost him the world title against the apparently flintier though equally affable Piastri.
Dealing with criticism is part of being a prominent sporting figure. Does Norris, smarting from his treatment by the Tifosi, care about his naysayers?
‘I don’t search for being liked,’ he argued. ‘But I would certainly say I don’t like to be disliked. I want to come across as a good guy and a nice guy. I don’t want to give the opposite impression. If I give people that idea, it’s normally because they don’t understand the situation or me well enough.
‘You’re never going to be liked by everyone. I’ve come more to terms with that fact. I always want to give a good impression. It’s something that I care about.’
From where does that instinct to act decently, and to be thought well of, originate? ‘My parents, mainly,’ he said.
Norris’ father, Adam (left), with the Dutch king and queen at Zandvoort last month
There is a vulnerability about Norris that may well cost him his shot at this season’s world title
So back to Monza, not only for what it meant then but what it indicated for the team’s interactions with their two drivers in the eight remaining races, including Sunday’s in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, where yesterday both he and Piastri grazed the wall in practice.
Clearly, McLaren’s top brass, chief executive Zak Brown and team principal Andrea Stella, want to keep a lid on a rivalry that simmers but refuses to boil over. I detect that privately they know – Brown perhaps more so than the diplomat Stella – that the Monza instruction was on the outer edge of what is acceptable, even a step too far, a neutering of racing.
And would Norris move over if it came down to a similar circumstance in the last race, the championship on the line in Abu Dhabi on December 7? Whatever his answer, the fact the question is even posed highlights the rod McLaren made for their own backs.
‘The team are just trying to make things the best for both of us,’ said Norris, adding, surely implausibly about Monza, that: ‘The whole thing was in the best interests of Oscar, so he won from that situation.
‘Was it maybe a bit too complicated? Should we have just boxed a bit earlier? Potentially, but it was because we were trying to win the race, wait for the safety cars, VSCs (Virtual Safety Cars), whatever it might have been to work for us, so our risk maybe was a bit too high. That’s something that we reviewed and continue to review.
‘If it was the last race in similar circumstances? Well, the list of similar things is not long. It’s more about the principles we want to stick to.
‘It’s not something we think of now or worry about. The thing we both do as drivers is trust the team, and that’s what we’re continuing to do.
‘It takes a combination of drivers to be on board with it, and it also takes a team to be well run. So, you’ve got Andrea and Zak at the top, and then you have Oscar and me who want to do things fairly. There are more selfish drivers out there who would disagree with it, which is a fine thing to do…’
McLaren chief executive Zak Brown (centre) is keen that his drivers do not develop a more bitter rivalry
‘I don’t like to be disliked. I want to come across as a good guy and a nice guy. I don’t want to give the opposite impression.’
And to a perception in certain quarters that he is the favoured son of McLaren, a long-time junior they would bend rules for to see him take their first title since Lewis Hamilton in 2007?
‘It’s not a bad boy image,’ argued Norris. ‘It’s not like I did something (in Monza). It wasn’t even my decision! The Italian fans have been very good to me since 2019. I’ve had a lot of support. It doesn’t bother me at all.’
Sorry, it does bother Lando, whatever he says. He is a fine driver, but his overthinking of everything is a curse in his line of work. It means that Piastri, as if operating under the shade of a coolabah tree, is favourite for the title right now.
And Piastri’s tentative embrace of this likelihood is probably why he obeyed the order in Monza. Long game, smart tactic.
