Lando Norris says ‘there’s only one place’ he would go if he ever left McLaren

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Lando Norris has admitted one rival Formula 1 team tempts him, but stressed his commitment to McLaren.

Norris made his F1 debut with McLaren in 2019 and is now their longest-serving driver with 159 race starts, nine more than second-place David Coulthard.

Last year, he became the team’s first world champion since Lewis Hamilton in 2008. He told F1’s Beyond the Grid podcast that the contract he signed in 2024 still has multiple years to run.

Lando Norris’ intriguing answer about his McLaren future

Asked if he could envisage spending his entire career at McLaren, Norris replied: “Very potentially. I don’t know how long I’ll be in Formula 1. My contract still goes for a good amount of years, so I know I’m not leaving anytime soon.”

He already ranks fourth for total races with the same constructor and is poised to overtake Michael Schumacher (180 with Ferrari) for third next year.

Intriguingly, Norris said he did have one destination in mind if he ever changed teams, but predictably he kept it to himself.

“If there’s any place I want to go, there’s only one place,” he said. “That’s it. There’s only one place I would ever be interested in, but that’s very, very… in the distant future.

“For now, I’m heavily committed to McLaren being the only one time I ever want to be with. I feel like they’re my family. I want to do as much as I can with McLaren, for five years, 10 years.”

One cliche in F1 is that every driver dreams of racing for Ferrari. Hamilton’s move to the iconic Italian team in 2024 has only strengthened this narrative.

Norris was ‘in the running’ for a Ferrari seat ‘a few years ago’, but decided to stay at McLaren instead. Ultimately, one can only speculate as to the identity of the team.

It emerged during the Austrian GP weekend that McLaren have held talks with Max Verstappen, but the consensus is that Oscar Piastri would be the driver to move on if they did recruit the four-time world champion. Even that is unlikely to happen before 2028.