Lando Norris
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Lando Norris’ title feat in 2025 was the first new world champion since Max Verstappen in 2021, and former F1 driver Marc Surer has explained why it’s exactly what the sport needed.
Despite a sub-optimal opening half of the season, Max Verstappen pulled off a wondrous comeback after the summer break to put the pressure on Lando Norris and make the McLaren pit wall sweat.
The Red Bull star clawed his way back from a 104-point deficit to the top of the standings after his home Grand Prix in Zandvoort to miss out on the title by just two points.
However, Norris was a deserving champion in the end. He, too, had to overcome a disadvantage in the F1 standings to knock his teammate Oscar Piastri off the top spot, and the British driver did it in style.
Fill in the gap: Max Verstappen will finish his F1 career with _____ titles
Marc Surer tells Max Verstappen why Lando Norris winning the title was ‘good for Formula 1’
During an interview with Formel1.de, former F1 driver Marc Surer touched on several narratives that were in play during the 2025 season, including the outcome of the season finale.
F1 journalist Kevin Scheuren compared the eventual title-winner to the 2009 world champion, Jenson Button, a resemblance that Surer wholeheartedly agrees with.
The 74-year-old said, “So the comparison with Jenson Button is absolutely right. We have a world champion that everyone likes. He is a great presence. He is always laughing, he is friendly to everyone.
“So he is good for Formula 1. And let’s be honest, after the series of victories from a Hamilton or a Verstappen, we are glad that there is finally a new world champion. And he is a great presence.
“So from that perspective, he is a role model world champion. So I left Abu Dhabi and was actually quite happy with how it turned out.”
Norris previously voiced his frustrations with Verstappen’s dominance in F1 during the opening stages of the 2024 season.
The world champion called the predictability of the Dutchman’s victories ‘boring’ after he finished the Chinese Grand Prix that year nearly 14 seconds ahead of the McLaren star in second place.
- READ MORE: Juan Pablo Montoya tells Lando Norris he was lucky not to face the ‘Max Verstappen of 2021’
Do you think another driver will ever be able to match Schumacher’s feat?
One of Michael Schumacher’s greatest F1 records still stands after Lando Norris beat Max Verstappen to the 2025 title
Thanks to Norris, Michael Schumacher still stands alone as the only F1 world champion to have secured five consecutive titles in the sport.
Verstappen hasn’t been a stranger to usurping Schumacher’s records since he started his world-beating form, but five back-to-back titles is arguably the most difficult of them all to pull off.
The stars need to align for it to happen, and in the case of the Dutchman, he was just three world championship points away from joining the German driver in a league above everyone else that has entered F1.
In a recent comparison of Schumacher’s 2002 campaign and Verstappen’s 2023 season, that was already on display.
Both years are considered two of the most dominant seasons in F1 history, and the Dutchman just edges the seven-time world champion in average points-haul when revised with the current points-scoring system.
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