Lando Norris
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Lando Norris became the 11th British driver to win the Formula 1 title in 2025, as the McLaren man denied Red Bull rival Max Verstappen the championship by two points.
The Bristol native is also the first person to win the F1 drivers’ championship while racing for McLaren since Lewis Hamilton won the first of his seven titles to date in 2008. Hamilton quit the Woking outfit to join Mercedes in 2013, and went on to win six titles from 2014 to 2020.
Norris also won the 2025 title after overcoming a 34-point deficit to his McLaren teammate, Oscar Piastri, after 15 of the 24 rounds. The 26-year-old outscored Piastri across each of the following six rounds, and would have made it seven without his disqualification in Las Vegas.
McLaren endured a double disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix that cost Norris a P2 finish plus 18 points and cost Piastri 12 points for P4. McLaren’s strategic mistake behind the safety car in the Qatar Grand Prix even cost Piastri and Norris additional points at Lusail.
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Guenther Steiner ‘can’t agree’ with the claims that Lando Norris did not deserve the 2025 F1 title
McLaren’s blunders meant Norris eventually won the 2025 F1 title in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix by two points over Red Bull rival Verstappen and 13 over teammate Piastri. Yet he has since faced some suggestions that he did not deserve to win the title this season.
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Guenther Steiner cannot agree with the claims that Norris did not deserve to win the title in 2025, though. The former Haas team principal is adamant that Norris is a worthy champion, having seen the McLaren driver prove his doubters wrong as he fought back in the title race.
“I can’t agree with that,” Steiner told Krone. “He absolutely deserved the title. Lando fought until the very end. We had already written him off during the season, myself included.
“But he bravely fought his way back, and that’s why he became world champion. He learned his lesson and avoided the mistakes he made at the beginning of the season.”
Lando Norris overcame his early-season mistakes to win the 2025 F1 drivers’ title
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Norris retired from the Dutch Grand Prix due to an oil fitting failure in round 15 this August, which cost him a P2 finish and 18 points while Piastri won and Verstappen inherited second place at Zandvoort. It was the only mechanical failure for any of the title contenders in 2025.
But the Briton bounced back brilliantly, thanks in part to McLaren ordering Piastri to give P2 back to Norris in the Italian Grand Prix, to outscore the Australian over each of the following six rounds. Piastri lost his way after the Italian GP, as he could not get over their team order.
Piastri was the champion-elect prior to the Italian GP, thanks to how events had unfolded at the Dutch GP. Norris had been the McLaren driver making the regular mistakes through the first half of the year, but Piastri then went from woe to woe until he responded in round 23.
Qualifying, in particular, was Norris’ major weakness at the start of the 2025 F1 season, with the Bristol-born pilot often unable to maintain his potential during Q3. Norris called himself “clueless” after qualifying P6 in Bahrain, then an “idiot” after crashing in Q3 in Saudi Arabia.
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