Norris on his goals for 2026, getting used to his World Champion status and proving to himself that he has what it takes

It's Tuesday afternoon and Lando Norris has just bounded into our studio, nestled deep inside the McLaren Technology Centre, for our first interview of the year. He's been going for six hours or so already, completing various tasks as part of a marketing day, but he's still exuding energy.

After shaking everyone's hand, he drops onto the sofa and we chat winter holidays while the crew finesse the set-up. It's clear he's still riding the crest of a wave after achieving his life-long dream of winning the title.

When we get down to business, I kick off with a run-through of the predictions he made for 2025, as part of a feature for Formula 1's digital content channels. 1) Stand up for yourself. Well that's a big tick. 2) To enjoy my life. Another tick. 3) Do more for others. That's a third big tick. 4) Win the Drivers' Championship. Ker-ching! Big tick. 5) Win the Constructors' Championship. Huge tick, with six races to go no less.

As I read through each, Norris is looking down, a smile etched across his face, as he relives it all.

Having achieved so much last year – on and off the track – how on Earth is he going to improve on that? "That's tough!" he says with a laugh. "Of course, the goal is exactly the same, but it never gets easier, especially with the rules changing. It's almost an even bigger challenge for us.

"You've got a lot of teams that are fighting more than ever – and it's also closer. [The plan is] to do the same, simple. Try and déjà vu the whole year and just let it all happen again! That's my goal. That's the team's goal. But it takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of effort. So we have to keep working hard."

In achieving his dream – and defeating four-time World Champion Max Verstappen plus McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri – Norris became one of just 35 people to have been crowned Formula 1 World Champion since the series began back in 1950. He's only had the honour of the title for a couple of months, so is it still weird when people call him world champion?

"Yeah, because it's just such a big thing," he says. "It's been my whole life. It's been 20 years or so of trying to achieve it and now it's done and I'm trying to do it again. I still find it odd, but it's easily one of the coolest things ever when people say that and you see the number [1 on the car] because it's a genuine thing now.

"The more people say it to me, that allows it to settle in the most, rather than just kind of seeing it, because sometimes you're like, 'nah, I don't believe it'. But when someone says it, I'm just like, oh, that's, it's a real thing'."

The winter break was spent with his friends and family – "it was nice to forget about life and just be normal". So he has come back feeling "recharged" and "relaxed". It's meant he's been able to spend a little bit more time at home in Monaco – giving him the chance to do a bit of a spring clean.

As he cleared up, he found a box – or rather the box – which housed his World Championship trophy. It now sits proudly in his hallway, alongside his other most prized piece of silverware – the winner's trophy for Miami, which was his first in F1. It means he can see them, and be reminded of what he has achieved, every time he steps through his own front door.

"They're like two of the biggest moments," he says, as it feels like he immediately transports himself back to those times. "The first win in Miami, I can still picture everything pretty clearly. Then having [the World Championship trophy], to be able to hold it and have that sense of, this is it. I've seen videos and photos of it for many years.

"I've seen all the ones that Max [Verstappen] had, the four of them all stacked up behind him when he's on the sim and stuff, so the fact I now have one of them and my name is alongside the people I looked up to in Lewis [Hamilton], Fernando [Alonso], Max, Seb [Vettel], and then all the other incredible people and the greats, especially the guys who have been in McLaren and [Alain] Prost and [Ayrton] Senna, all these guys, so to see my name alongside some of them is, is pretty, it's a beautiful thing."

'Last year I proved to myself that I have what it takes'

While Norris is still basking in the glory of that success – and rightly so given the scale of the achievement – it's clear that the Briton has gained oodles of confidence and become mentally tougher courtesy because he proved to himself that he could do it.

It's well-documented that he has always been very tough on himself. He has been his harshest critic and preferred to not believe it was possible until he had actually done it. Whatever you make of that strategy, it worked for him last year and, now he has reached the highest step in motorsport, it feels like he believes the world is really his oyster now.

"I feel more relaxed, even more relaxed, which is a great thing," he says. "Last year I proved to myself that I have what it takes. I've always had to do it to make myself believe it.

"It's the wrong way around in a way, but that's just me. Even last year, it was hard to believe what was happening and whether it was going to be possible until I crossed the line in Abu Dhabi.

"I just feel more like I can come into this season and just know I can always have an answer to myself now. Every time I might have a bad day or bad weekend at the track, I can [say to myself] 'I did it last year and I proved to myself that I can do it'.

"So I don't need to question myself anymore and that's a great thing. It gives confidence and that's a very important thing in our sport.

"I came back into MTC and see the same faces and it's the same determination, the same desire to want to just repeat it all over again. It's déjà vu in a way. It feels different at certain moments, but underground, like the underlying feeling is you kind of forget about it and you're like, I have to go and do it again."

Entering F1's new era

Whether or not Norris will be able to do it again and successfully defend his title (only 11 drivers have managed to do that in the sport's history) will depend on the kind of car he will have at his disposal. And while he has full faith in his McLaren team, the squad he has been with since his F1 debut in 2019 and the operation which has won the last two Teams' titles, the pecking order is unknown for this season given the sweeping changes to the chassis and power unit regulations.

Norris got his first taste of the MCL40 last week in Barcelona – but given all teams were simply focusing on shaking down the cars rather than chasing performance, it's still a case of way too early to tell where his team will stack up this season.

"It's a different game this year in terms of car, in terms of how you have to drive it," he says. "It's still early days and Barcelona is pretty cold so how the tyres work, how the car works is also quite different to how it's going to be in Bahrain [for official pre-season testing]. But I think we're in a good place.

"There's plenty of things we could have done better and I needed to probably be a little bit more on top of. But that was the reason for the test, is to kind of get all the niggles out and get all the issues out. We've got time to try and iron them out and improve on things.

"But I'm with a team that's won the last two World Championships so I'm definitely not lacking any confidence that we're going to be strong and we're going to be fighting for things. Whether it's going to be first, second, third, fourth, I have no idea.

"And I think that's also something I've learned, is to just have no expectation anymore. No point, it causes too much stress, anxiety, all those things for no reason. So yeah, we're in a good place. We need to improve on many things, but at the same time, we're a long way up before the first race still so we have to be patient."

Like last year, one of his chief rivals is going to be his team mate Piastri. The Australian led the way in the championship for much of last season before he faded in the final part of the campaign. Norris and Piastri have always got on very well, even when it became tense in a title fight, and the Briton doesn't expect that to change given the immense amount of respect they have for each other.

"We did our first shoot together last week and we were both the same, we didn't want to be there!" he says. "But we're both looking forward to it again. Of course he's going to try harder than ever to turn things around and to do even better than he did last year, which was already incredible, and I have to try and raise my game to deal with that because we both made our lives very tough for each other last year.

"We're going to continue to try and do that for our whole career. It's just an awkward dynamic always within Formula 1. You don't get it in any other sport where you're team mates but you're also fighting to try and be better than one another.

"But at the end of the day, I think we know that we have respect for one another and that's the most important thing. We're going to have moments where things don't go either our way together or one person's way but we have a lot of faith in the team.

"Andrea [Stella, Team Principal] runs things very well and so does Zak [Brown, McLaren CEO]. And I think we're excited for all these battles that we're going to have together. I'm excited for more of them this year."