New F1 champion Lando Norris has Somerset street named after him

Lando Norris has been immortalised in his home county of Somerset after being crowned F1 world champion for the first time.

The 26-year-old Briton clinched his first world championship by finishing third in last Sunday’s season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Norris narrowly beat Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to claim his maiden drivers’ title by just two points in a tense finale.

The McLaren driver has been honoured by having a pedestrianised street named after him near his hometown of Glastonbury.

‘Lando Lane’ has been named after Norris at Clark’s Village shopping outlet in Street, where Norris went to school.

Norris was born in Bristol but grew up around Somerset.

Chris Davis, centre director of Clarks Village, said: "Lando is a local hero and we are all absolutely delighted that he’s been crowned world champion.

"He spent his formative years here in Somerset and it was during this period in his life when he took up karting, a path that has ultimately led to him becoming the best F1 driver in the world.

"Renaming our street ‘Lando Lane’ is our way of commemorating this incredible achievement from one of the region’s favourite sons.”

Norris remembered by former teacher

One of Norris’s former teachers, Mr Bishop, also spoke about Norris’s achievement.

"I’m just really proud for him for his achievement. It’s quite an incredible journey, and it happens to very few people,” he told ITV.

"He had the talent that was kind of identified early on and nurtured throughout and even just to see how McLaren have handled him over the last few years as well.

"I still remember him as that little boy that was in the house. I’ve not had the good fortune to meet him since, I hope I do one day.

"But I would certainly remind him of what he was like when he was younger and just be a bit in awe of him and what he’s achieved. I’d wonder what was next for him and what his ambitions were going forward because I think he would be very keen to maintain himself at the very top of his game for some years to come.

"I’d probably like to know what motivates him. I’d like to hear about his memories of school and what he thought of his experiences at school.”

So what was Norris like at school?

"He was a really, really nice young boy, very sociable and extremely polite,” Mr Bishop explained. “He had a good sense of humour, and he just enjoyed really being one of the boys.

"It was good for him just to be part of the school environment as he had a lot of pressure on his young shoulders at that time in terms of trying to manage school work alongside the racing schedule that he had.

"He became go-karting world champion in the first year that he joined us and then moved on to the Formula 4 and Formula 3. That meant a lot of weekends away and a lot of work to catch up. Part of it was trying to help him manage that sort of thing.

"He was involved in the karting and when he was coming into school you knew he was he was talented. He was doing spectacularly well in all these races and winning the world championships for the karting was a really big one.

"If he came back from a bad race weekend you would kind of know because he was focusing on it, thinking about it and analysing it. I think that was probably one of the strengths that he had as an individual which has probably helped him reach this pinnacle of his career is that ability to analyse and self-reflect and to look for ways of improving.

"He was always looking out for the small details. He was constantly learning from his experiences. He was able to manage his school schedule and his racing schedule, and he had very little down time. That takes an amount of maturity in the way you can approach those things. He seemed to have his feet really firmly on the ground."