Who is Lando Norris? The winner of the Miami Grand Prix broke the curse, plays golf and video games in his spare time – AutoRevue.cz

The world of Formula 1 is so vast that some of its events transcend the motorsport bubble and are talked about elsewhere. And maybe, even if you don’t actively watch F1, you registered a photo of a cute boy with a big smile and curly hair in an orange jumpsuit. This is Lando Norris, the British driver for the McLaren team who won the Miami Grand Prix on Sunday 5th May. But why is this a little more of an event than other victories?

24-year-old Lando Norris won in Miami for the first time in his career, he entered the F1 world in 2017 as a junior Mclaren driver. In 2018, he featured as a reserve and test driver for the McLaren team and cut his first Grand Prix and the entire season in 2019, finishing 11th overall. At the time, he was the youngest British F1 driver, until then Jenson Button, who joined in 2000 at the age of twenty.

In 2020, he was already doing much better. He finished third in the opening race and set the fastest lap, finishing in 9th place overall. Just one year later, he jumped to sixth place overall, finishing third three times and even second in Italy. During his Formula 1 career, Lando finished on the podium fifteen times, but never won. All the way to Miami. Last year, he even finished second six times, of which Max Verstappen was the leader five times.

It is Verstappen who is the dominant driver, ahead of whom only a few drivers finished on the grid from the beginning of the 2022 season until this year’s Miami – his teammate Sergio Pérez, both Ferrari drivers and George Russell from the Mercedes team. And in Miami, Norris joined these names and perhaps the entire formula world is celebrating. The boy deserved it.

Lando Norris started his racing career at the age of seven, in karts of course. In 2013, when he was thirteen years old, he became the European KZ2 champion, just like Jos Verstappen, Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Alexander Albon and Max Verstappen a year before him. In 2017, Norris won European F3 and a year later finished second in Formula 2. In 2018, he participated in the 24 Hours of Daytona with Fernando Alonso and Phil Hanson.

Lando Norris was born in 1999 to the family of a British hotel manager and his Belgian wife. He has three siblings, two younger sisters and an older brother. Lando has both Belgian and British citizenship, but races under the British flag. As a child, among other things, he was engaged in horse riding. He studied physics and mathematics. His role model is Valentino Rossi aka The Doctor.

Lando Norris is active on social networks, but he also streamed on the Twitch platform, where he performs under his own name and plays not only racing games. He co-founded esports team Quadrant during the pandemic. Among other things, he plays golf, which his former team-mate Carlos Sainz introduced him to. Of course, he parks McLaren cars in his garage, but you would also find cars from Ferrari and Rolls-Royce.