Lando Norris: “I Dream Of These Days”

An overwhelmed and emotional Lando Norris has taken his first-ever win in Formula 1, winning the 2024 Miami Grand Prix ahead of Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

After the race, Norris was quick to praise everyone who has supported him over his five years in F1 over his race radio.

@f1chronicleofficial Lando Norris 2024 Miami Grand Prix Race Radio – Emotional! #f1 #f1tiktok #mclaren #fyp @mclaren @landonorris ♬ original sound – f1chronicle

The celebrations continued as Norris crowd-surfed with his team, before being wrapped up in a trademark Zak Brown bearhug.

Still on a high, the race-winner couldn’t hide his emotions when speaking with fellow Brit Jenson Button on the podium, saying “Oh wow. About time, huh? ****, sorry. What a race, huh? Yeah, it’s been a long time coming, but finally I’ve managed to do it, so I’m so happy for my whole team. I finally delivered for them. And, yeah, long day, tough race, but finally on top, so I’m over the moon.

“I’m just proud, really. I mean, a lot of people, I guess, doubted me along the way. I’ve made a lot of mistakes over my last five years, my short career, but today we put it all together, so this is all for the team. I stuck with McLaren because I could believe in them, and I did believe in them, and today proved exactly that.”

As his achievement sunk in, Norris was able to put into words what this win meant, as he finally shook the race win monkey off his back.

“To get that first victory is always incredible. And I’ve, of course, had my moments where we’ve been close, and I’ve never been able to convert it into the win. But I wasn’t worried. As much as a lot of people doubted that I was going to be able to put it together and win a race, I wasn’t worried. I’ve kind of been more confident than ever this year that I’ve got what it takes and the team have got what it takes and I was patient with it. I’ve just been doing my job and executing my races, executing my qualis, and doing what I can do best. And I knew my time was coming. I said it this morning. It’s not often that I’m optimistic about things. But actually, all weekend, there’s been something, you know? Like, already practice, qualis. We’ve been close. And we were very good on Friday. And there was kind of that spark. And we maybe lost it a little bit into Saturday. But today, it definitely came back and turned into a little fire. So yeah, it was an incredible race.

“I mean, I said at the beginning of the year we could win races. A lot of people doubted what I could say and the fact that I said that. I think they doubted that McLaren could win races. They doubted that I could win races. But I was confident. Deep down I knew that we had our time coming. So the team have done an amazing job. We weren’t even into Q2 here last year. So now the fact we’re on top, we’ve won a race, the team have done an insane job to kind of go from where we were to where we are now. And we’ve chipped away, especially the last couple of months. There’s been a lot of hard work. And whenever you bring an upgrade, it’s not easy to kind of just go out and execute and just show that it’s better. But little things come together and when you have all these little bits coming together, it turns into a perfect day like it did today. So, of course, I have to say a big thanks to all of McLaren, everyone back in the factory, everyone that’s here, because I doubt… It would have been a lot less likely that I won today without these upgrades and without the hard work that they’ve been putting into everything. So, I would like to say it’s the start. And now I’m already hungry for more. But, yeah, we’ll keep our heads down. We’ll keep pushing and I’m sure we can be here a lot more often.”

After coming close to his maiden win at the Russian Grand Prix in 2021, Norris was happy to finally put that narrative to bed today in Miami.

“Russia ‘21 was a very, very different situation to today. A lot of people talk crap about Sochi and the things which went on. And yes, I potentially lost out on a victory. I did lose out on a victory. I and we. I never want to drag the team down but I didn’t do the best of jobs and as a team we didn’t. So that happened. And as much as people like to continue to use that and say, even after China last weekend when I made a mistake in Turn 1 on Lewis… Yeah, I mean a lot of people doubted that I could go out and win races and perform under the pressure of leading the race, especially with Max behind you and those types of things, but really this year I felt more confident than ever. I wasn’t thinking of these things. Like, probably last year would have thought of it. But this year I’ve been much better with just kind of keeping my mind focused and focusing on my job. I’m doing a good job. I’m fast and I’m executing things exactly how I want to do. I’ve improved on a lot of my weaknesses and all that hard work has paid off. So no, I wasn’t thinking of that thing. So I was smiling. And I was thinking like, how am I going to celebrate? What am I going to say? I’m not very good at kind of just coming up with these things and improvising when that situation comes. So I was rehearsing my lines. But when I went over the line, I just turned into something else. I don’t know what it is. It’s just you’re just happy. So my voice hurts a little bit. My throat hurts. Yeah, you just forget about it. You don’t really care what you’re thinking of. You’re just looking at the track. You’re focusing on that. And once you cross the line, then you just let go.”

At the end of the race, it seemed as though every driver on the grid came up to congratulate Norris. As well as the drivers, former President Donald Trump was on hand in what was a special moment for Norris.

“I didn’t see him in the garage, to be honest. I was busy prepping for the race. But he saw me after, and he came up to congratulate me. So I guess an honour, because whenever you have someone like this, it has to be an honour for them to come up to you, to take time out of their life, to pay their respect for what you’ve done. He said he was my lucky charm because it’s my first win. So I don’t know if he’s going to come to more races now. But yeah, there’s a lot of special people or cool people that have been here this weekend. Donald is someone that you got to have a lot of respect for in many ways. And yeah, for anyone like that who acknowledges what you can go out and do and acknowledges the work ethic that goes into things, you got to be thankful for that. And I was. So yeah, a cool moment,” concluded the race winner.