Do We Really Need Our Sportsmen To Be Likeable?

Yesterday, a teary eyed Lando Norris won his first Formula 1 World Drivers’ Championship. This was the first time a McLaren driver lifted that trophy since 2008, and the eleventh time a British driver did it in the history of the sport. This would have been an occasion to celebrate across the fandom, except that Lando Norris is generally not your underdog champion with a winner's mindset that you add to your motivational edits on Instagram.

More importantly, he is McLaren's (undue) favourite, and not quite a likeable driver either.

The Many Problems of Lando Norris

Anyone who has been following the sport for a while now would agree that Lando Norris' greatest enemy is Norris himself. Sure, he has shown that he can be a capable driver, but his potential often gets lost amidst the myriad PR nightmares he has found himself embroiled in, especially since 2024.

For a Formula 1 driver, Norris wears his heart on his sleeve. Trash talking has been a constant in this sport, but his attempts at doing so turn out to be massive PR disasters. Take the time when Hamilton tried to compliment his Mclaren after the 2024 Hungarian Grand Prix. Norris, on the other hand, not really satisfied with his performance in the race (he came second after teammate Oscar Piastri) retorted, “You had a fast car seven years ago”. Or when he attributed Verstappen's epic victory at the Brazilian Grand Prix that year to “luck”. For context, this was the race where the Red Bull driver won all the way from seventeenth place, that too in the rain.

Now, trash talking is not uncommon in the sport at all. Everyone from drivers to team principals do it (and it's "simply lovely" to listen to all the back and forth) but the thing about making these comments is that they increase the pressure on drivers and teams to perform well, and Norris often buckles easily under pressure, especially when he starts from the pole. Add to that the fact that when he underperforms, he takes it too hard on himself.

But these are just Lando's own problems. Oscar Piastri, his teammate at McLaren, has time and again proved that he can a more level-headed, even better driver than Norris, and allegations that McLaren favours Norris over Piastri have only added to the British Driver’s already compromised image. It also does not help that the team’s strategies have cost the drivers dearly as recently as the Las Vegas Grand Prix a couple of weeks ago, when the two were disqualified after the race because of skid wear issues, giving Verstappen an even better chance at winning the WDC.

All this, however, does not change the present reality that we live in. Despite all the drama, the comebacks, the mistakes and the twists, Lando Norris is the champion of the 2025. Add to that the fact that he was a strong enough title contender last year, too. And if there is anything we learnt from Abu Dhabi 2021, the trophy for the best driver actually does boil down to how many points the contenders have. If fairness were the deciding point, Hamilton would have had his 8th WDC by now.

“I would rather not have a Norris domination era…”

Now before anything, I will be honest about my loyalties here: I have been a Red Bull supporter ever since I got into the sport. While I am disappointed at Max not winning the driver’s championship despite the jaw-dropping comeback he had in the later half of this season, there is a point where the fandom has to draw a line with its support for its favourite drivers.

F1 fans as a whole were nostalgic for the times when drivers were not PR trained as they are now, but could not handle it when we got that driver in Lando Norris. We saw Lewis Hamilton dominating races in the 2010s, and we grew tired of him (“Anyone in a good car like Hamilton-era Mercedes will win,” a friend once said when looking back at his WDC wins from the decade). We saw Verstappen winning for four years, and we turned it into a joke that Formula 1 is a sport where twenty cars race in circles, and the Dutch anthem plays at the end. Then, as soon as it seemed in 2024 that Lando Norris could be a title contender, we went back to rooting for Verstappen. To the point that Tifosi sang Verstappen's infamous meme song and booed Norris after the former won at Ferrari's home race at Monza this year.

At the end of the day, Formula 1, or any sport for that matter, is not entertainment. The sport does not revolve around the preference of fans, nor are any drivers or team members answerable for their victories. Neither does a driver, that too a rookie like Kimi Antonelli, deserve death threats for not being able to defend against a would-be world champion. If we expect sportsmanship from our sportsmen, then it also falls on us to show basic decency to the ones involved in the sport.