EXCLUSIVE: ‘I want to make this my home’ – Why Norris sees his future at McLaren

Lando Norris is beaming. This isn't uncommon as it's pretty much his baseline, but the Briton's smile and chirpiness is noticeably even brighter when we meet on the uber-cool boulevard of the McLaren Technology Centre for a chat.

This is because Norris is here to talk about a huge new deal that will keep him at McLaren until at least the end of 2030. Come the end of that term, he'll have been with the team for 12 years, equaling the record stint countryman Lewis Hamilton had with Mercedes.

It's an extraordinary show of faith in McLaren, with the British team holding the same belief in Norris. And given how perfect Norris and McLaren seem for each other, it's perhaps no surprise that he's chosen to extend his stay with a team where he feels at home.

"I'm very, very excited," he says in his first interview since the news was announced. "McLaren's been my home since the very, very beginning of my career in Formula 1 and I want it to stay that way for as long as possible. We've had a great few years and I'm confident we can achieve that many more times. So I want to stay."

Norris began his F1 journey with McLaren, starting as a test and developing driver, before stepping up as a reserve. He got the nod for a race seat in 2019, racing alongside Carlos Sainz, and went on to take his first podium in Austria 2020 and first pole in Russia 2021.

His first win came in Miami 2024, his first Monaco triumph in 2025 and his first Grand Prix victory on home soil followed that year when he won at Silverstone. He of course would go on to pick up his first World Championship and McLaren's first drivers' title since 2008.

They've seen it all together but they're not done yet. Why change what isn't broken? Especially when you can confirm your long-term future and give yourself some stability.

"I know for a good amount more years that I'm comfortable in terms of I've got a job and I’m where I want to be, and with the people that I want to be with, and for me that's calming," he says. "I can focus on a job I need to do and as a team we can also focus on the job that we want to do."

He adds: "You can always see results as most important and 99% of the time I think they are, but I would say there's leeway, there's leverage in terms of just the fact I'm with the people that I want to be with, people that I enjoy spending my career with.

"I don't want to be bouncing around teams and doing different things. I want be where I'm happy and, even when we weren't winning, I was also happy to be part of McLaren.

"I think something I always know for my future is I want results of course – the team know that just as much as anyone – but I also just want to be wherever I'm most happy and even if we're not winning like the beginning of this year, it's not like I want to change team.

"I'm still very happy with who I am with and happy to kind of fight through whatever we have coming up."

'I don’t want to distract my team'

Fighting back McLaren are. After a slow start, which included McLaren failing to take the start in the opener in Australia and both failing to start at the following race in China, the reigning World Champions are fighting back.

An upgrade in Hungary before the break hauled them into contention and opened the door for Norris to secure his and the team's first victory of the season. That package was completed with more parts after the break in Zandvoort, with Norris taking pole and a second successive victory.

He's still someway off in the championship fight, as he sits 83 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli, but he and McLaren have the momentum – and if last year is anything to go by (when Max Verstappen sliced through a 104-point deficit to force a title decider in Abu Dhabi) Norris is very much in with a chance of defending his title.

That response is just what Norris knows McLaren are capable of, but that form didn't trigger this renewal. Those chats had been in the diary since he won the world title in Abu Dhabi last year.

Norris knew he wanted to stay and McLaren knew they wanted to keep them. To warn off admirers from elsewhere on the grid and to stamp out any ambiguity about his future, they were both keen to extend.

"It's a continuation of my last [contract]," he says. "We just want to be able to focus on doing our best job, to extract performance, to get the most out of everyone and focus on the importance that we do not get caught up in the mess of everyone else deciding contracts.

"I don’t want to distract my team, I don't want to distract the guys and girls here that are here to give me the best car possible and for me to do the best job for them.

"We want to focus on our jobs and not think about all the noise that goes on in the sidelines. So for me it's 'guys I'm here to stay. I want to be with you for a long time' and it gives them a good boost, gives me a good boost and together it means we can just focus."

'I want to make this my home'

Norris also believes in the set-up McLaren have, led by CEO Zak Brown and Team Principal Andrea Stella. "Zak is a very good leader, he's a very good boss," says Norris.

"As much as we get on and we just, we love racing, we want to win together, we enjoy golf and things, he is still my boss so he still gives me a kick whenever I do something wrong or if I'm not doing something well enough.

"That's always what I want – someone that's honest and who gives me the brutal truth no matter what it is and that something that's very important to me.

"At the same time I have that very much so with Andrea, and Andrea is for me – and of course I'm biased and this is the only place I've been – but we have had a few different team principals and he is most certainly the most influential over the team.

"He is an incredible leader, someone who knows how to bring a group of people together and also knows how to lead individuals such as me in terms of how I can go out and increase my performance every day and be a better person.

"So, even if I could change anything with where I am now, I wouldn't and I think that's the perfect reason."

Will Norris, who will be 31 when this next deal expires, ever leave McLaren? There's a very good chance he won't.

"I want to make this my home," says the Briton, who holds the record for the most starts for McLaren. "I want it to be the place that I am at for a very, very long time and maybe even forever.

"There are more nice things that just allow me to work better here and live better here, and that's an amazing thing."