Norris’s guileless response gave Max Verstappen, sitting next to him, the chance to play it ultra-cool by comparison, telling the press conference that, no, his parents were not here as they had long since made other plans. “My dad is rallying in Africa, and my mum is at home, happy with the dogs,” Verstappen smiled, adding: “You can see a lot on TV anyway.”
The super-wealthy family fueling Lando Norris’s rise in motorsport
Lando Norris celebrates his title triumph with girlfriend Yas Marina Credit: Reuters/Amr Alfiky
During Thursday’s FIA drivers’ press conference, the three championship contenders were asked whether their parents would be in Abu Dhabi for the season finale — and whether they’d invited them or preferred they stayed away. News.Az provides you with an article from The Telegraph.
Lando Norris answered first, offering a heartfelt response about always bringing friends and family to the last race of the year because he relies on their support through the tough times and appreciates the part they’ve played in his journey. “I want them to be there,” he said, “because whether I win or lose, it’s a moment I want to share with the people closest to me.”
It rather set the tone for the week: Norris tense, emotional, trying to play it down (“If I win, it won’t change my life” etc) but clearly hyper-aware of just what this moment means to him, and to his family and friends. Verstappen, meanwhile, ratcheting up the pressure on Norris by stressing, at every available opportunity, that, for him, this really is all just an unexpected bonus. Oh, and by the way, he has “won four of these trophies already” and spent the early part of this week planning his GT3 campaign for next year.
The exchange was insightful, though, because it made clear just how close Norris is to his family. Regular F1 watchers will be familiar with his parents by now. Adam and Cisca, the latter of Flemish-Belgian descent. Both were in attendance this weekend, along with Norris’s older brother Oliver, and his two younger sisters Flo and Cisca (named after her mother).
They were all front and centre for the immediate celebrations with Norris on the finish line, alongside the newly crowned F1 world champion’s Portuguese supermodel girlfriend, Magui Corceiro. There were tears, love hearts from Norris’s mother and hugs all round. George Russell, Norris’s long-time British adversary, was also there to congratulate him, as too were his former McLaren team-mates, Carlos Sainz Jr and Fernando Alonso.
Norris Snr behind the perfectionist mindset
Their hinterland is also pretty well-trodden. Adam, an entrepreneur, is regularly cited as one of Britain’s wealthiest men with a net worth estimated to be somewhere north of £200m, having built up one of the UK’s most successful pension companies, Hargreaves Lansdown, before retiring at 36 after it went public. He later founded Pure Electric, now the world’s No 1 electric scooter brand.
It is Adam who is credited with instilling a strong sense of self-criticism and a perfectionist mindset in his son. It is Adam who pushed his two boys, Oliver and Lando, the younger brother by three years, into karting and then kept his foot to the floor.
“He always had the dream of getting into motorsport himself but never had the opportunity,” Oliver explained in a recent interview with the YouTuber Lucas Stewart of the initial inspiration. “We had no background in it. So he bought us this motorbike for the field, and he would sort of go out and mow a nice little circuit for us and we would go out and drive around there. Then I think he thought ‘How can we take this further?’ And I think for my brother’s seventh or eighth birthday he bought this little go-kart.”
The rest is history. In an interview for Telegraph Magazine last year, Norris recalled those days in the meadow in Somerset, where the family moved from Bristol, partly so he could attend Millfield prep school, and then the boarding school itself.
“I used to love driving the mower,” Norris recalled. “It was a proper sit-on one. But I was so small when I was a kid – 30kg when I was 10 – I had to drag some of my dad’s dumbbells from some old gym equipment he had, and put them on the mower, because the mower wouldn’t start unless there was 50kg on top. I used to go out after school and just drive the mower, and cut everything and perfect the garden!” The mowing sessions paid off.
Racing is in the family
Oliver competed with and against Lando until quitting in 2014, conscious that he was not at the same level as his younger brother.
“I just wasn’t at the front winning,” he explained, simply, of why he stopped. “I was competing against [Lando] and he was younger than me, and winning. Every time he would jump up and into a new category at the youngest possible age and he was up there fighting for the championship at the earliest possible moment. [But] I had a good run. Had lots of fun.” Oliver now runs his own company, Cool Performance, making driver simulators for use at home.
The Norris offspring are clearly high achievers. Flo is an international showjumper, competing in equestrian events such as dressage, eventing, hunters and equitation.
It is Norris who stands on the verge of superstardom though. While much is made of his privileged childhood, the fact that his super-rich father funded his progress through motorsport’s ranks – not only providing him with new tyres, multiple series at the same time, and exclusive track time, but a manager and a trainer since the age of 12 – it is noticeable that none of Norris’s old rivals begrudge him his current success. “Everyone can say he had the best equipment,” one of Norris’s junior rivals told The Times recently, “but a lot of kids had a lot of money but didn’t have the will to put the effort in. The work ethic was amazing.”
‘I’ve accomplished that dream I had when I was a kid’
Norris himself has always been anxious not to come across as entitled. He makes no bones about the leg-up his father’s wealth gave him – not unusual in the world of F1 – but he is proud of the fact that he took the final step himself. More than most F1 drivers, Norris is sensitive to the way he is perceived. He clearly wants to be a good person, grounded. After an unhappy time at school (“I wasn’t bullied or anything. I just never really integrated,” he said in that same Telegraph Magazine interview last year), he attaches a lot of importance to friendships and loyalty. Which is why it was touching to hear him speak so warmly about his family and friends in attendance this week.
Ironically, there is a school of thought that Norris actually performs worse when his parents are at races. That may stem from the fact that Adam, who attends virtually every race, missed his son’s maiden win in Miami last year. Also perhaps the rather fraught scenes at the McLaren motorhome in Qatar last weekend when Norris’s clearly emotional parents called their son back to give him a last hug and a kiss as he made his way off the track, shell-shocked following McLaren’s strategy nightmare, on Sunday evening.
No matter, Norris wants them here. Win or lose, they have been part of his journey and Norris is nothing if not a good boy. In Thursday’s press conference, he smiled as he spoke about some of his mum’s quirks – the colourful clothes, the ribbons in her hair, the superstitions. “I mean, my mum does many things – different shoes, odd-coloured shoes, whatever, she does a lot of different stuff,” Norris said after Verstappen revealed that his mother lights a candle for him before every race weekend. “She doesn’t, I think, do anything that I know of that’s like Max said. But yeah, she also tells me similar things: stay away from the others and be careful. I guess it’s just a different mentality. You know, like Max’s mum was a racing driver, so I think she understands probably more than our mums might do. So, I think they get maybe a bit more scared because they don’t understand everything that goes on quite as well. But yeah, I love my mum, so it’s good.”
It is going to be a stressful watch for Norris’s entourage in the McLaren garage on Sunday. But at the end of it, win or lose, they will be together. “This has been my whole life,” Norris reflected on Thursday of what it would mean to him. “It’s everything I’ve worked towards my whole life. So, it would mean the world to me. It would mean the world to everyone who’s supported me and pushed me for the last, what is it, 16 years of my life, in terms of trying to get to this point. It would mean everything. It would mean my life until now has been a success, and I’ve accomplished that dream I had when I was a kid. Other than that, I don’t know what else to say. It’s a reward for a lot of hard work that goes into things, and I think it will go to whoever deserves it the most.”
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