This guys mega - how Norris developed into world title contender

Lando Norris became McLarens team leader in 2023, aged 23

Australian Grand Prix

Venue: Albert Park, Melbourne Dates: 14 March-16 March Race start: 04:00 GMT on Sunday, 16 March

Coverage: Live radio commentary of practice and qualifying on BBC 5 Sports Extra, race live on BBC Radio 5 Live. Live text updates on the BBC Sport website and app

McLaren Formula 1 boss Zak Brown has guided Lando Norris career since 2015, and believed he was a future world champion "pretty much right away".

This could be the year Norris proves him right.

McLaren ended last season as constructors champions and, barring unexpected surprises, Norris has the chance to build his flirtation with a title challenge against Red Bulls Max Verstappen last year into a full-on onslaught in 2025.

Brown is far from the only one who has long felt Norris was destined for the very top.

Stephanie Carlin, who worked with Norris throughout the junior categories and is now McLarens F1 business operations director, also always believed he would make it.

"He was just phenomenally quick," Carlin says, "and he was able to execute it really well. Theres been an underlying talent and speed and pace thats existed from the first time he got in a car."

Lando Norris (centre) after winning a Formula 4 race at Spa in 2015

Brown has been backing Norris, 25, since long before either were at McLaren.

Until Norris reached F1, the money to fund his career came from his father Adam, who became a multi-millionaire through success as a pensions trader.

Norris, who has dual Belgian nationality through his mother Cisca, was educated at Millfield in Somerset, but as his career blossomed it became increasingly hard to find time to attend school, and there was a fair bit of home tutoring involved.

Every step Norris took on track, he was a winner, but when it came time to move up to motor racing for 2014 after winning European and world karting titles, Adam Norris and manager Mark Berryman did not have the necessary contacts.

They turned to Brown - then the boss of a sports marketing agency called JMI, and well known in F1 as a deal maker and sponsor finder.

Initially, Brown felt "this is not what I do". But Norris team were persistent. Brown says: "I thought: All right, everyone tells me he is the greatest thing since sliced bread, maybe I can help."

Brown set Norris up with a meeting with Ron Dennis, then boss of McLaren, and soon started helping him as he moved up through the ranks. "He just destroyed everybody in everything," says Brown.

Norris (right) poses alongside Zak Brown and Fernando Alonso at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in 2018. It was the Spaniards final race with McLaren with Norris replacing him the following year

By 2017, Brown was in charge of McLaren Racing, after Dennis was ousted by the other owners, and he began to lay out the steps for Norris to graduate to F1.

In January 2018, Brown paired 18-year-old Norris with then McLaren driver Fernando Alonso, a two-time F1 world champion, in the Daytona 24 Hours sportscar race in his United Autosports team.

Norris gave himself the target of setting a faster lap than Alonso - and achieved it. And stunned people with his pace in the wet at night before the car eventually retired.

"Fernando Alonso, one of the best racing drivers in the world, Lando was his match," Brown says. "Cold tyres, middle of the night Daytona, if you asked Richard Dean, who ran them, who was better, he wouldnt know."

When Alonso announced he was quitting F1 at the end of 2018, Norris was the obvious replacement, and McLaren started giving him experience in practice sessions.

Having proved faster than one McLaren race driver, Stoffel Vandoorne, in his first outing, his next was at Monza, with Alonso in the other car.

Brown recalls: "Theyre swapping times. Fernando has just set his time, so hes done, and obviously paying attention to what times Lando is doing.

"We come on the radio to Fernando and we go: Fernando, Landos on a lap, get out of his way.

"First sector, same 10th. Second sector, Lando is half a 10th up. Third sector, on the radio, Fernando: Sorry, I didnt see him. Lando: Fernando just blocked me! And we all just giggled on the pit wall, like, Welcome to Formula 1.

"So when you see those things, you just think: This guys mega."

A few races later, Norris jokingly served Alonso a cup of tea during a wet practice session at the US Grand Prix in Austin. But soon he was the apprentice no longer.

In his debut season in 2019, Norris was immediately a match for his team-mate Carlos Sainz, who had four years experience, and he destroyed then seven-time race-winner Daniel Ricciardo when the Australian joined the team in 2021.

By then, Alonso had returned to F1 after two years in other categories. He and Norris swapped helmets. The Spaniard wrote on the one he gave to Norris: "You are a star - a rock star."

Norris quickly became a fan favourite, with his diffident-but-jokey personality, and willingness to show his true self on social media. His public profile built through the Covid-19 pandemic as he live-streamed himself playing video games, and he used that to build his gaming and lifestyle brand Quadrant.

Brown says: "He used to be very shy and he still kind of is a quiet, shy guy in his own way. Even though he kind of comes off as extroverted, hes actually not. But as hes become more mature, I have seen him become more comfortable in his skin.

"He has never lacked confidence. He was a young kid when I first met him, he was 14. So what Ive seen outside of becoming a better racing driver, (is) a better team leader, more prescriptive in what he wants. And his on-track performance has grown with it."

It has taken time for Norris to establish himself as a front-runner in F1.

In their first few years together, the McLaren car was not fully competitive, although Norris came close to a win with a superb performance in Russia in 2021, only to misjudge the incoming weather and not pit for wet tyres in a late downpour.

Norris kept the faith, signing two contract extensions, despite interest from Red Bull. That, Brown says, was down to "relationships, transparency, visibility to what we were doing. Hes comfortable here. This has been his family since day one."

Norris career trajectory turned midway through 2023, a year that started with a restructuring of McLarens engineering group by Andrea Stella, who had been made team principal the previous December.

The first fruit of Stellas reshuffle was an upgrade package for the Austrian Grand Prix in July 2023. It vaulted McLaren from close to the back to become the closest challengers to dominant Red Bull.

Norris took his maiden pole position at the 2021 Russian Grand Prix. He was more than half a second clear of anyone else, and more than two seconds quicker than team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who was fifth fastest

Carlin joined McLaren at the beginning of 2024. It had been more than five years since she had worked with Norris in F2.

"I sat in engineering and heard him giving feedback," she says, "and I was blown away. I just could not believe the development of this teenager Id known, a very successful F2 driver and champion in F3 and F4. It was incredible."

Those first five years in F1 had turned a boy into a man, and a promising driver full of potential into one of the best in the world. But there was still learning to be done.

After a slow start to 2024, another upgrade for the Miami Grand Prix in May made McLaren absolutely competitive. Norris took his maiden win that weekend. He secured three further victories as it began to look as if he could challenge for the title.

In the end, the head start Verstappen established in the first five races of the year was too much. A few small Norris errors along the way did not help.

"I made my mistakes, and I learned a lot," Norris says. "The one thing Ive learned is probably to believe in myself a bit more."

Norris is not one to shy away from his difficulties in public.

Berryman says: "I know he berates himself a little bit but hes always done that. Were trying to stop him doing it as much but he probably wont. Hes a bit like Charles (Leclerc of Ferrari). They just say it how it is.

"The main thing from a Lando perspective is that I dont think there has been anything that hes not got considerably better at after review. On a development curve of Lando, we are not plateauing yet. We are still at a pretty high level of (growth) in terms of where he is hungry in looking at himself and helping himself."

Carlin adds: "Learning to be an F1 driver and learning to be a championship-contending F1 driver are two different things. And thats what weve talked about, in terms of learning how to win a race first of all, and learning how to win a world championship are two completely different campaigns."

There were signs by the end of last year that the lessons had been taken on board. Now it is down to Norris to deliver on them.