Lando Norris was ‘in the running’ for a Ferrari seat before signing McLaren extension

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Lando Norris has signed four contract extensions since he joined McLaren in 2019. Staying at Woking is a no-brainer now, but in the past, it required a leap of faith.

McLaren were so impressed with Norris’ performances as a rookie that they extended his deal halfway through the season. He renewed again in the spring of 2021.

Norris finished sixth in the championship that year, with McLaren fourth in the constructors’. His first three seasons had only yielded five podiums.

The longest contracts in Formula 1

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But Zak Brown persuaded him to make an emphatic four-year commitment before the 2022 season. It perhaps looked like a mistake at times, particularly when McLaren started 2023 as the slowest team in F1, but it proved to be a masterstroke.

Lando Norris was a contender to join Ferrari but kept faith with McLaren

Norris and McLaren started competing for regular podiums after transformative upgrades in 2023, confirming to the British driver that they were bound for the top. His fourth and most recent extension could keep him with the team until the end of 2029.

Red Bull were once interested in Norris, and now Italian journalist Pino Allievi has revealed that he was ‘in the running’ for a Ferrari seat too. He may have been an alternative to Carlos Sainz when the team decided to drop Sebastian Vettel in 2020.

How many Grand Prix wins would Charles Leclerc have if he drove for McLaren in the ground-effect era?

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But Norris ‘believed’ in Brown’s vision and has been rewarded with the world championship this year. McLaren have also won back-to-back constructors’ titles for the first time since the start of the 1990s.

“Credit to Norris,” Allievi said on the Terruzzi Raconta podcast. “I think Norris’ greatest merit is that he believed in McLaren, signing a long-term contract when no-one else believed in them, when McLaren were in the last places in the constructors’ championship.

“He had other offers. He was in the running [for other teams] – I even heard about it at Ferrari a few years ago. He believed in the politics of Zak Brown and Stella, and he was rightly rewarded.”

How would Lando Norris have performed against Charles Leclerc?

The Ferrari revelation opens up the fascinating hypothetical that Norris and Charles Leclerc could have been teammates.

Norris is the champion, but many feel that Ferrari are holding Leclerc back from achieving the same success.

Christijan Albers says Leclerc, Max Verstappen and George Russell are the top three drivers in F1, with Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri just outside that bracket.

Leclerc says the 2025 McLaren was as good as the 2023 Red Bull, which won a record 22 out of 23 races. One wonders how good he could have been in the MCL39.