When Lando Norris crossed the checkered flag less than a second ahead of Max Verstappen at the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix in mid-March, the win would foreshadow a 10-month championship battle defined by hazy team orders, catty comments, and off-track noise.
That title fight concluded today under the overhead lights and fireworks of the Yas Marina Circuit in Abu Dhabi as the 26-year-old McLaren driver snatched away Verstappen’s hopes of a fifth consecutive crown. Just two points ahead of the No. 1 Red Bull and stretching a 13-point advantage over teammate Oscar Piastri, Norris won the F1 World Drivers’ Championship with a third-place race finish behind the two.
The British driver became McLaren’s first driver’s champion since Lewis Hamilton’s 2008 win, overtaking Felipe Massa’s Ferrari by just one point in the standings—the validity of which is being contested in the British court system at this very moment. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix also marked the first three-way, final-race title fight in 15 years, since Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, and Mark Weber’s on-track battle in 2010.
Norris, starting from second on the grid, defended against the threat of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and was able to hold off Piastri — despite the Australian driver delivering a masterclass of an overtake on his teammate early on that spelled out a chance of championship success.
But even with two drivers fighting for the championship, McLaren’s triumph was far from inevitable.
When Norris sped into the final race of the season 16 points ahead of Piastri, Verstappen loomed large between the two in the standings. The Dutch driver’s ability to drag a less-competitive Red Bull consistently into points-scoring and podium-finishing positions brought an unexpected obstacle into McLaren’s blazing orange path.
But it was McLaren’s internal tug-of-war rather than Verstappen’s racecraft that extended the fight as long as it ran. Even Verstappen, when asked ahead of the Qatar GP what the championship would look like if he were driving Norris’ McLaren, said, “We wouldn’t be talking about a championship. It would already have been won, easily.”
In the team’s tireless pursuit of fairness, McLaren routinely got in its own way, in the way of its two drivers, and in the way of providing its audience of viewers real, unmanufactured racing. At the Italian GP in early September, McLaren instructed Piastri to give up his race position for Norris and used the position swap at the 2024 Hungarian GP that favored Piastri as an argument: “Oscar, this is a bit like Hungary last year. We pitted in this order for team reasons. Please let Lando pass, and you’re free to race.”
As a narrative of both internal and external allegiances formed, pitting the two rival teammates against each other, it distracted from the real task at hand: securing the drivers’ title without any hiccups. The occasional, but impactful, pit stop mishaps paired with radio back-and-forths only brought unnecessary added pressure. A double McLaren disqualification following the Las Vegas GP, after both drivers’ cars failed skid block tests, may have made the championship more thrilling for spectators tuning in, but ultimately interrupted McLaren from gaining breathing room and an early drivers’ championship win.
The uncertainty and messiness came to an end on Sunday as Norris, who joined F1 as a McLaren driver in 2019, stood teary-eyed in front of countless cameras capturing a moment for the history books: “I’ve not cried in a while and I didn’t think I would cry, but I did,” Norris laughed. “It’s a long journey.”
Norris’ championship win from third place seems to say it all. An emotional and grueling season defined by the term “scrapping by” culminated in a bittersweet, scrappy finish.
Maybe it wasn’t a perfect end to the season for the McLaren driver, nor the photo-finish first-place win you see in the movies, but it was still a life’s worth of work that paid off.
“It has been the last 16 to 17 years of my life chasing this dream, and today we did it,” Norris said.
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