McLaren continues to surprise us with how much they have improved year on year. From fighting not to be on the last row of the grid in 2016, to 2020 where they managed to position themselves as the third best team in Formula 1, only behind Mercedes and Red Bull. Today a McLaren contract extension with Lando Norris was announced until the end of 2025. This means that the British driver will be with McLaren for another 4 full seasons (counting 2022). A team has been known to fully trust a driver when it decides to re-sign them for a considerable amount of time, as was the case with Norris. He has had an incredible performance and has managed to show that he is capable of taking a team to the top, if he is given the tools to do so. He has claimed multiple podium finishes and, despite the fact that he has not achieved his first victory in Formula 1, Lando contributed in an unforgettable way to McLaren's last 1-2 of him during the Italian Grand Prix in 2021.

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl and McLaren CEO Zak Brown have confirmed that Lando Norris brings stability to the team and that, despite having already made a lot of progress, they still have work to do to get there, where the team wants to be.

“The announcement last year was pretty much just an extension of an existing contract which would have brought us only two more years with Lando. If you look at the overall plan we have in place here, the journey we are in, we know that despite the good steps we made in previous years, we still have big next steps to make.” Affirmed McLaren’s team principal, Andreas Seidl.

“We simply need more time in order to keep growing as a team, and to finish these infrastructure projects and actually benefit from them.”

“In order to get to this position we are targeting, in order to fight for race wins every race weekend, having Lando with us, and having this consistency and continuity also in the driver line-up will be an absolute key in order to achieve these targets. Therefore, it was very important for us to lock in Lando until end of 2025.”

“Key for us for creating stability in the team, this continuity and consistency, not just on the driver line-up side but throughout the entire team, and I’m very happy to announce also that the long-term signing of Lando goes hand-in-hand with long-term commitments from Zak’s side, from my side and my entire leadership team, which again, is a great sign of belief of everyone that is involved in that journey.” Andreas Seidl commented.

As we can hear, there is a huge amount of trust that has been placed in Lando Norris, and with good reason. His numbers and his statistics support him being listed as one of the best drivers currently in the top category of motorsports. If McLaren becomes one of the teams that takes the most advantage of these new aerodynamic regulations that the FIA has implemented as of this season, this could be a great step that the British team can take to advance faster in its development and manage to reach the top.