Lando Norris

With the 2023 Formula 1 season recently concluding, Max Verstappen sealed his historic season complete with 19 wins. Many of the other drivers on the grid didn’t get the same spotlight as the three-time champion. Yet, certain drivers deserve this attention, perhaps none more than McLaren’s Lando Norris. With an astounding year, he placed sixth in the Driver’s Championship, with the assistance of rookie teammate Oscar Piastri, who helped reestablish McLaren as one of the frontrunners on the Formula 1 grid.

Throughout the 2023 season, Norris went through many ups and downs. At the first race of the season in Bahrain, his car lacked pace, resulting in a disappointing 17th-place finish. This lack of pace would carry over to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where Norris finished 17th yet again. Things looked grim for the team as they continued to experience lackluster finishes, amassing a total of 12 points over the first eight races.

Then, at the Red Bull Ring for the Austrian Grand Prix, Norris managed to place fourth; a huge step in the right direction for the team. From here, he would score back to back second place finishes in Great Britain and Hungary. McLaren would keep this fantastic pace up throughout the rest of the season, enabling Norris to pick up five more podium finishes and 123 more points. He scored points in every single race after the Austrian Grand Prix, except for Las Vegas where he crashed out.

While a race win has alluded Norris for his entire career up to this point, the progress is very prevalent, and now that McLaren has proven that they’re capable of taking the fight to top teams like Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, the perseverance of Norris to stick with the team through the good time and the bad time has become very clear. It shows how his positive outlook on life and ability to work towards success has finally started to benefit him. For Norris, it seems like his career just continues to get better and better as he races toward the ultimate goal of being a world champion: the pinnacle of success in Formula 1.