Lando Norris says he hopes establishing his own junior team and driver programme can help guide underfunded talent all the way to the Formula 1.
On Wednesday Norris announced two separate projects; a single-seater race team called LN4 Fusion and the LN4 Legacy programme which aims to support a young driver’s career through the FIA’s ladder.
LN4 Fusion will be run by former long-time Prema team boss Rene Rosin, with Dan Hazlewood running the team’s UK arm, and is working on fielding cars in F2, F3 and British F4.
LN4 Legacy Programme, led by former Alpine sporting director Julian Rouse, is a fully-funded programme aimed at supporting young talents all the way to the top. Norris says he was keen to give back to the sport in the face of the spiralling costs of single-seater racing.
“The legacy programme is more to pick out individuals, people that we believe can get to Formula 1 and try and help them one at a time. That’s our initial goal,” Norris explained. “The fact that drivers have to kind of go out of their way to do it is, I think, an acknowledgement of how difficult it is.”
Given the finances involved, LN4 Legacy Programme is starting by backing one yet-to-be-named junior driver, but Norris is hoping he can raise the backing to scale up the programme in the future.
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Kym Illman / Getty Images
“The scale we’re talking about, you’re talking tens of millions to start projects like this. And you need good backing from a lot of investors, things like that. And that can easily be and will be a longer-term project,” he said.
“We’ve got to start somewhere. And I’m happy that I’m trying to help at least one to begin with, and then we’ll work on two and then three and then four and five.”
On the team side, Norris said former Prema chief Rosin was the ideal candidate to lead LN4 Fusion after racing against the Italian’s powerhouse team for years, and Rosin surprisingly became available after ceding control of the family-owned team last winter.
“I’ve known Rene for many years, since I started to go into single-seaters,” Norris explained. “We wanted to put together a group that is experienced and knows how to lead a team and not just create one good team, whether that’s just in F3 or just in F2, but be able to put together a project and something long term.
“I’ve also been able to experience over the course of the last seven years what makes a good leader, what makes a good team. A lot of it starts with the person at the very top and he is that person. He was the inevitable choice.”
Norris revealed Rosin had received plenty of interest from various corners to join LN4 Fusion, with the project getting a positive reception from around the industry.
Doriane Pin, PREMA Racing, Rene Rosin of PREMA
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
“The reactions have been great. Rene said he got over a few hundred job requests within the space of an hour or so of the announcement,” Norris said. “So, there’s a lot of attraction from a range of drivers, but also mechanics, engineers, all the people that make a team. I’m proud that we’ve been able to put something very special together.”
Norris credited the team he had built around him for helping him take on projects like this, meaning he can still focus on his day job at McLaren and pitch in whenever he is available.
But he was also conscious that it will take much more than his project, or fellow world champion Max Verstappen’s GT3 race team, to make a lasting impact, as he called upon the FIA and on F1 management to help bring the exorbitant costs on the single-seater ladder.
“If you want to help bigger areas and economies that are just worse to kind of start racing and allow people to start their dream, it’s much bigger than just me doing my job and trying to help out on that,” he said. “That takes the sport itself. That takes a lot more work from F1, from FIA, from karting companies.
“It’s just simply too expensive, so you cannot rely on people just to fund more people. You have to find other ways to make it more friendly for people to start racing and especially financially. You’ve got to lower the costs somehow of teams, of the ability to go testing, of just signing up to do Formula 2. F2 is over €2million euros, I think, to start.
“You’ve got to start somewhere. My ability is starting with one and that’s already a big project. Hopefully, over time and with more partners coming on board and more money, more support, we can turn it into a way of helping more people from around the world.”
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– The Autosport.com Team
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