Norris announced deal just before Hamilton: were McLaren just in time?
F1 News
Lando Norris secured his first F1 win in Miami with the McLaren team last weekend. For many, it confirms he made the right decision to stay with the team. Whilst the announcement was made at the end of January that the British driver had extended his contract, Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren, has now revealed the deal was signed a lot earlier.
Speaking on the F1: Beyond the Grid podcast, Brown was questioned over the timing of Norris' contract and whether it had anything to do with the announcement that Lewis Hamilton would be leaving Mercedes and moving to Ferrari in 2025. In response to whether they were aware that Hamilton was making the move, Brown said: "No, we actually just announced him [Norris]. We'd actually signed him at the end of the year, but we wanted to make the announcement with him back."
"We didn't want to kind of do a paper press release. So I think a lot of people went, oh, just in the nick of time. The reality was he had been signed for a couple months."
For Brown, there was no hesitation in extending Norris' contract, as he said: "we knew we wanted Lando." Nevertheless, the official announcement came at the end of January that Norris had renewed his contract on a multi-year deal. His team-mate, Oscar Piastri, announced his contract extension in September 2023 before even completing his first season with the team. As Brown commented: "Only a few races in last year, we'd seen enough pretty quickly. It was like, well, why wait till whatever date was in the contract?"
Does McLaren have the strongest driver line up on the grid?
So far this season, McLaren sits third in the Constructor's championship, with both drivers being in the top 10 in the Driver's standings. Norris is in fourth, whilst Piastri is in sixth. Commenting on whether he belives his team has the strongest line up, Brown shared: "I think we do. If you take their speed and their age, their commitment to the team, our commitment to them, the length of the agreement, yeah, there's no other driver combination out there I'd want other than the two guys we've got."