Hardened Norris relishing F1 2025 title tilt after learning from Verstappen fight

“I’m just excited to have another crack at it,” is Lando Norris’ approach to the 2025 Formula 1 drivers’ championship on the eve of the opening round in Melbourne.

If the McLaren driver is at all chastened by last season’s ultimately forlorn attempt to topple Max Verstappen, he is not letting it show ahead of the new campaign.

Norris ran Verstappen closer than anybody in 2024 but still fell well short of wrestling the crown away from the Dutchman, even if McLaren – with Oscar Piastri also weighing in heavily – did take the constructors’ spoils for the first time since 1998.

Dubious team orders, questions over his capability to cut it at the very top and Verstappen’s wily race craft all, at different stages of the season, had to be dealt with by Norris.

Now though, he is looking back on his scraps with Verstappen as experiences that should hold him in good stead this time around.

“I learned a lot of things last year,” he said. “I clearly wasn’t quite ready to deliver on everything that we needed to deliver on from a racing point of view. That’s just because racing against Max is a unique situation, and you don’t get to experience it in any other way of life until you really get to that point.

“Had it been a battle against different drivers, I don’t know if it would have been the same. It definitely probably wouldn’t have been as hard.

“That’s probably a fair assessment because I do think Max will be the hardest guy to race against. He’s always going to be the one who’s going to be most willing to push the limits and push the boundaries like he did. So I learned that aspect of Max.

“I learned where I stood in that situation, which was not at the right level. I learned from those things. I’m just excited to have another crack at it and see what I can do.”

While singling out Verstappen, Norris also named several others that he expects to battle against for the title, including Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, as well as Piastri.

A blot on the McLaren playbook from 2024 was the inter-team rivalry between Piastri and Norris, which at times threatened to derail its quest in both championships leading to the introduction of ‘Papaya Rules’.

Essentially, it was an attempt to give a cute name to team orders presenting the pair with their rules of engagement for the remaining races. But Norris revealed that the duo will be able to race one another at the start of the season, beginning with Piastri’s home race at Albert Park.

“There are no Papaya Rules, at the minute there’s nothing,” said the four-time grand prix winner.

Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, 2nd position, Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team, 1st position, congratulate each other in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“We’re free to race. We’re happy to go against each other and compete. Of course, we have to know that we’re going to be against each other a lot this season and I hope we are. 

“But our strength last season was helping one another and always giving each other a good amount of room, racing fair. Those kinds of things.

“That was our strength last season, and we need to maintain that. That’s one of our biggest things as a team. It’s always going to be tough because we want to beat one another.

“That’s inevitable at the end of the day. At the minute, there are lines that we can’t cross as team-mates. Just keep both cars on track and don’t let any debris fly. Apart from that, we’re happy to race. We’re excited to race against one another and push each other to the limit.”

Having ended last year with the fastest car and putting in a strong showing in Bahrain pre-season testing, many have picked McLaren to be the dominant team throughout 2025 – but Norris again moved to dismiss those claims.

“I’m quite surprised so many people are so short-sighted, especially people you wouldn’t expect to be, making so many conclusions before you even start the season,” he said.

“Everyone just wants to play that game of looking like the underdog and playing it down. People can talk what they want. We’ve kept to ourselves, we’ve kept focused, and we want to be quick.

“We expect to be up there fighting but I don’t think you can think by the margin that everyone’s saying.”