Andrea Stella and Zak Brown have praise for Lando Norris for coming of age to win the 2025 F1 title, as he they also have a good word on Oscar Piastri.
It has been a longtime coming for Norris. After seven years with McLaren, the Brit broke the shackles to secure his first F1 world championship and the team’s first since 2008 when Lewis Hamilton took it in a dramatic fashion. It wasn’t as straightforward still for the youngster.
After a distant run against Max Verstappen last year, Norris had teammate Piastri against him this year alongside the Dutchman. It didn’t start of well either as he the Australian took the points lead very early in the season. At one stage, they were 34 apart and things not looking great for the Brit.
But things changed in the second half of the year and Norris started to pull himself back when Piastri started to struggle. In the same period, Verstappen clawed a mighty 100 plus points gap to touching distance to both the McLaren drivers. But the Brit’s timely surge allowed him to have the advantage.
In the end, he took the title by two points with team boss Stella and Brown praising his grit and determination during the course of F1 2025 when hopes were lost at his end. Considering the level of the sport and drivers in current age, they feel he did a solid job to beat them.
For Brown, it was a long wait as well with Norris. Having taken him under his fold from a young age, the American invested in the youngster and brought him through the ranks to F1. Just reaching the pinnacle was not enough as well, as they had to endure the low times to finally reap the benefit.
The praise wasn’t just for Norris, as both Stella and Brown equally praised Piastri for his fight in only his third season in F1. The Australian looked mighty for the most part of the season. A handful of drops and up trend of Verstappen threw him off. Brown laid a bold claim that he will be a champion one day.
Norris coming of age –
Stella: “The level of Formula One drivers nowadays is so high that you cannot succeed. And for clarity, when we talk about succeeding, it’s so close even in the classification. And even between Lando and Oscar, they are two worthwhile champions and it was a matter of a few points in the end when you scored more than 400 points. But to compete at this level, the only way to stay in the quest is to keep evolving continuously. And if I look at Lando, definitely there was a lot that was taken away from the quest last year, even if it didn’t go to the last race. I think Lando elevated his sense of, almost his status, like I can compete with Max. There were some learning points, like Austria, it was a tough one. But this season there was another important turning point in my view, which is the way Lando, and we talk specifically about him for a moment, responded to the difficulties we had at the start of the season. There was the start of a process which was structured, holistic, involving personal development, professional driving, race craft.
“And I think it makes me particularly glad that Lando could capitalise on this, because this has been something that not necessarily I’ve seen many times before in terms of the amount of work, the people involved, and the rate of development. So I think this has made Lando even capable, and this again is valid for both our drivers, of absorbing a couple of tough moments. Like when we needed to tell the drivers that we got disqualified, that was tough, because they had done the job, but we had not. And they lost a lot of points. In a similar way, absorbing the fact that in Qatar we had a moment where we could have done better, but we never pointed the finger at the team. So there’s so many aspects on which both drivers have grown, and especially this constant support to the team, not only is the one that makes me most proud of our two guys, but I think it’s also the most important for the overall success.”
Brown: “I mean, it’s every driver’s dream to grow up to be a world champion. It was my dream, I just didn’t make it to Formula 1 and didn’t win any races, but otherwise I was really close. So it’s awesome to do it together. I remember when he was about that big, the management he has around him, Mark and Fraser and his whole family have done an awesome job bringing him up to be the mature world champion that he now is. And it’s a great accomplishment and it’s very rewarding. And also the same thing with Oscar, right? Oscar is going to be a world champion. I’m convinced he’s going to be a world champion in a McLaren. And while we got him a little bit later in his career, we still took a risk on both our drivers, right?
“Both times they drove a Formula 1 car, it was a McLaren. And for a big team to take a risk, if you’d like, on young drivers feels very rewarding. And to be able to have two number one drivers against all odds, all the noise that we’ve had for so long that it’s impossible to do what we did, which is have two awesome racing drivers that win seven races each, that genuinely enjoy racing each other and are a treat to work with. They’ve never had an odd exchange between them. They’ve both been a little grumpy with Andrea and I from time to time. But I think that’s good. We’re pushing each other hard and it’s just such an accomplishment. And I’m very proud and looking forward to doing it again.”
Title battle –
Stella: “I think as a season, I was saying before with Luca Colajanni (PR) that it reminded me, or reminded us very much 2003, a season that ended up at the last race, it was a few bumps towards the end, and the whole season it was very tense and balanced, and that was a success of Michael Schumacher. And then we had obviously the 2007, once again we go at the last race, three drivers. So there’s a few examples, a few situations taken from the past that I’ve been thinking about, I have to say during the entire weekend. And I think when it comes to the quality of the driver, the quality of the success that Lando achieved this season, I think, and I’ve said that already before, the level of Formula One drivers nowadays is very, very high.
“Probably because the drivers already, from when they drive go-karts, they have telemetry data, they are so well supported, and they’re just on pace. We see for some established drivers it’s sometimes difficult to keep up with the new generation. So it’s a very high quality achievement, I think it’s also an achievement that beats Max Verstappen, four times world champion, in a team that knows the game very well. So I think it’s one that is very, very high level, very high quality, very prestigious. And like I said before, it’s also incredible that Oscar was also so close to this kind of achievement, which I think testifies that this is also a team achievement.”
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