How Lando Norris has turned his vulnerability into his F1 superpower

Lando Norris has elevated himself to another level since becoming Formula 1 world champion. 

For Norris and McLaren, wins have come like buses in 2026. After failing to win a grand prix in the first 10 races, two have come at once. The Briton followed up his first victory of the season in Hungary with a commanding win at the Dutch Grand Prix to boost his and McLaren’s hopes of a championship fightback. 

Norris’s quest of defending his world title seemed all-but over just a few races ago after a disappointing start to the year. But it has been boosted ever since McLaren brought a major car upgrade to Budapest that has propelled him and the team to successive wins. 

As a result, Norris has moved to within 83 points of championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli, igniting the prospect that he could yet feature in the title fight, even if it still feels a long shot at this stage. 

Off the back of his maiden F1 world championship triumph, Norris arrived in 2026 as a very different driver. This version is relaxed, trusts in himself and more confident than ever. 

Norris has become a much stronger driver and, crucially, he now believes it. This was underlined in his demeanour across the Zandvoort weekend, and in the answers he gave. 

"I was driving at a high level the second half of last year," Norris said after his victory on Sunday. "It's tough to say, but I do think it's a trickier car to drive this year in some ways. And I think you can see that because the gaps between team-mates are often bigger this year, I would say, than it was last year.

"I do believe I'm able to understand situations better, to understand the car in a better way. It's still just horrible to drive, but I'm doing a better job at just understanding this, relaying this to my team, figuring stuff out.

"So, it's not just that I'm driving better on track. I'm certainly eliminating my weaknesses on track, and I don't have so many, but it's also how I work off the track. And for me, yesterday to today is a perfect example of the work we put in overnight transformed our race and gave me the opportunity to win.”

Norris battled with self-doubt and anxiety during his early years in F1 and the 26-year-old has been remarkably candid and open about his struggles. Many perceived this to be a weakness, but Norris has crafted his vulnerability and turned it into his superpower. 

He has improved both off and on track and is “driving and operating at a very high level in absolute sense in relation to a Formula 1 world champion,”, according to McLaren team principal Andrea Stella. 

“What I like the most about his journey in Formula 1 is that he keeps improving,” Stella continued. “And especially after the start of the 2025 season, something clicked, which is not only a single click, but is a way of working with Lando, for Lando, and that we are adopting also on Oscar's side now in particular. And this approach has led Lando to continuous improvements.

“So it's almost like I see Lando stronger and stronger race by race. Because this weekend was nowhere near a weekend in which we could fight for the victory for granted, especially after having seen the performance in the sprint.

“But we invested in trying to understand where was the opportunity from a tyre exploitation point of view, and car improvement. Actually, both drivers improved from this point of view, but unfortunately a question mark remains as to the behaviour of the second stint of Oscar.

“So there's overall a positive trajectory for both, but at the moment Lando is capable of maximising the performance in qualifying trim. If we think about the start of 2025, this had become a bit of a concern that he overcame. And then, when you have conditions in which the car slides in the race, there's not much grip, he is the master in this kind of conditions.”

But it is Norris’s newfound state of mind and self-confidence that has struck Stella the most this year. Stella believes this was demonstrated in the clinical execution of his overtake on Antonelli, which proved key to his 13th F1 victory. 

“If you want to look at Lando from another angle, I would say that definitely he is now expressing a higher level of assertiveness as he drives," the Italian said. “You know, the manoeuvre to pass Antonelli is a really good demonstration of that. He's demonstrating more self-confidence.

“This is interesting, and I quite like it – the self-confidence sometimes is not demonstrated by being the most aggressive. Sometimes you are self-confident when you think like, ‘You know what? I'm not going to have a fight now because I may lose in this fight. It's a very long race. See you at the end of the race.’

“It's this confidence in your means, in your strength, that I quite like. Which means that sometimes you are actually the one backing off when the situation becomes too risky.

“We need to remember that in the last couple of races that he won, he didn't defend the pole position. He was actually second at the end of the first lap. But I did not hear or perceive any decay in his confidence, as to the fact that he was fast and he was just preparing his opportunity to then cash in on his competitiveness. 

“So I think assertiveness and confidence are probably the two characteristics that he has improved the most from a non-technical, non-operational point of view.”

Norris is driving better than ever and proving exactly why he is a world champion.