Lando Norris has reflected on his “incredible” Drivers’ Championship win as he was presented with the trophy at the FIA Awards on Friday night in Uzbekistan, 11 years on after he appeared at the awards as karting world champion.
The McLaren driver came out on top in Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix finale as the fight for the drivers’ title went down to the final race of an epic 2025 season – Norris, team mate Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen all had a chance of winning at Yas Marina.
While four-time champion Verstappen won the race, Norris’ third place result was enough to see him seal the title by just two points, which led to emotional post-race scenes as the Briton realised his childhood dream.
On Friday, in Tashkent, Norris collected his trophy on stage at the FIA Awards, while also looking back on a hard-fought year.
“Where do I start?” Norris said. “Congratulations and thank you to McLaren, the team I’ve been with for many, many years on giving both of us an incredible car that at times made our life very easy, and beautiful, and we could bring home many wins all the way to the end of the season.
“Of course, Mr Piastri, the incredible team mate that I’ve had, who has helped me improve so much over the last few seasons and made us the team that we are, allowed us to turn into the team winning two constructors’ back-to-back.
“Of course, to Max as well, for challenging us the whole way, putting us under pressure, just doing what Max always does.
“It was incredible. Obviously this is a lot of people’s dreams, a lot of racing drivers’ dreams and I got to finally live it – live that one dream that I had when I was a little kid.”
Back in 2014, a young Norris was on stage at the FIA Awards to collect his trophy as karting world champion, and he also looked back on his journey through F1 from that moment 11 years ago.
He added: “It’s been amazing to grow up here alongside a lot of you guys, deliver it with McLaren and to get to race all the World Champions that I’ve been racing against – Lewis [Hamilton], Max [Verstappen], Seb [Vettel], Fernando [Alonso].
“All the incredible drivers that I looked up to and watched when I was a little kid and get that chance to race against them, to try and beat them and to show what I can do against them all and we managed to do that this year.
“So [I’m] very proud, very happy of course. [I] got very emotional on Sunday after the race, then got extremely drunk and had an amazing time!”
There was also a moment of humour on stage as Norris dropped an expletive, saying: “I and we had our fair share of mistakes and **** ups. Can I say that here? I’m ok?”
He then continued: “Sorry, yeah. I got fined! I can pay it off now!”
McLaren CEO Zak Brown was also on stage to lift the Teams’ Championship trophy alongside the Woking-based squad’s Team Principal Andrea Stella – the pair having led McLaren back to the front of the grid in recent seasons.
“Fantastic season,” said Brown. “All the men and women at McLaren have done an unbelievable job led by our two awesome drivers, of course the job Andrea has done leading.
“To go into the final race with two drivers fighting for the World Championship when everyone said that couldn’t be done, I’m just very proud of how McLaren went racing and that’s exactly what we plan to do next year.”
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