Norris ready to win F1 titles - but how long will McLaren make him wait?

Whenever I go to Woking for the launch of a new McLaren I remember an event at the start of 1997, when the MP4-12 was unveiled at the old factory.

With the silver/grey West livery not yet finalised, engineer Matthew Jeffreys suggested that the car be unveiled in traditional McLaren papaya, and an initially reluctant Ron Dennis agreed – he’d wanted to keep it unpainted, until it was pointed out that it would not look very smart with different carbon weaves on show.

The car looked great in orange, and more importantly up close you could appreciate the detail and effort that went into the packaging. Coming only two years after the disastrous and ugly MP4-10 – the car that was too narrow for Nigel Mansell – it was obviously a big step.

Indeed with a little luck David Coulthard won the first race of 1997 in Melbourne, and over the course of that season Mika Hakkinen became a proper contender for race victories on merit. After the bitter disappointments of engine failures while leading at Silverstone and the Nurburgring, Hakkinen finally won the Jerez finale, albeit with a little help from Jacques Villeneuve and Coulthard, both of whom were told to move out of his way.

In 1998 things really came together for Hakkinen and McLaren, and he scored the first of his two back-to-back World Championship successes.

Last week I happened to speak to Mika about that period and the frustration he must have gone through waiting for McLaren to give him a competitive car.

He told me a long story about how at one stage, possibly around 1994, he took Ron Dennis to look at the Adrian Newey-inspired Williams front wing, contrasting it with the apparently simplicity of that on his own car.

Mika’s point was that Dennis knew he had to strengthen the McLaren aero department, and promised that he would. And a few years later he signed Newey.

“A driver is sometimes, I don’t say spoiled, or stupid, but they’re so desperate for winning,” said Hakkinen. “So you really need to have a lot of patience to be able to win.

“And that’s why sometimes they say that if you want to be a good winner you have to know also how to lose. And that is that is all about patience and time, and trusting the right people.”

That was an intriguing insight from someone for whom patience and sticking with it at McLaren did indeed finally pay off.

I thought of Hakkinen’s words during McLaren’s 2023 car launch when the orange MCL60 was unveiled. Team principal Andrea Stella and CEO Zak Brown were understandably cautious when discussing possible form this season, and they certainly weren’t going to say that the car will challenge the top three and win races on merit.

These cautions were confirmed during pre-season testing, with McLaren managing the fewest laps over the course of a three-day test in Bahrain due to reliability issues and showing very little in terms of pace.

The team is on a journey, as has often been said, and the final pieces, notably the new wind tunnel, have not yet been put in place.

The question that begs is how long can Lando Norris wait, as Hakkinen did, for McLaren to get it right? He’s now heading into his fifth season with the team, and he’s committed to staying until the end of 2025, which will be seven years in total.

Having seen his pals Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Carlos Sainz win races he could perhaps be forgiven for growing impatient if the MCL60 doesn’t represent at the very least a step towards the front. Think too of Lewis Hamilton having a winning car in his first season, or Max Verstappen in his second.

When I asked Stella if he would understand if his driver would become a little impatient, he stressed that the young but now experienced Norris can play his part in lifting the level of the team.

“I would certainly understand, and have sympathy for him,” said the Italian. “At the same time while we want to work on not only keeping Lando onboard, we also want him to take a leading position in the team.

“I’ve seen previously great drivers take leading positions when it was the time to build the team. And certainly, Lando is now ready to take this responsibility. But when it comes to us, the only thing we can do is focus on ourselves.

“We know that Lando will be happy, if we are happy. If we are happy with the development of the car, with the development of the team, then his happiness, his willingness to stay with the team will come as a natural consequence.

“So sympathy, and we want to involve him from a leadership point of view, but ultimately for us, we need to focus on doing a good job.”

To be fair, as Brown noted, Norris could well have had a victory on his CV by now.

“I mean, I’m here till ’25,” he said. “So not a lot I could do to change it, and nothing that I want to do to change it. I think I knew where we could end up in those several years, and now a couple of years. So I think from where we are now, a realistic year and a successful year would be to still take some big steps forward.

“I think we are ambitious. And we still want to do that. But no matter how we start the season, I want to believe it’s going to be better than last year, because last year was a very tough start.

“But a year where we can get back to fighting for the top of the midfield confidently, that’s something which slipped away from us a bit last year, with Aston having some very good performances and considerably better at times, and Alpine taking our spot.”

Norris is adamant that McLaren has to be heading the chasing pack this year: “We need to be the team that’s leading the way in the fight to the top three teams. And if we can at least end this season, around that spot, around that place, where we’re fighting for the fourth constructor, and we’re leading the way to the top three, then I think that’s what we need to be happy with.

“So I think we’re still ambitious, we have a lot of work to do in order to achieve it, but I think it’s a realistic goal. I don’t think you can expect us to be on par with Red Bull and Ferrari and Mercedes at this time. We still have a long, long way to get to that point. So we’ll see.”