Lando Norris breaks 10-month silence with emotional message to F1 fans | F1 | Sport

Lando Norris admitted he “didn’t know how to act” as he prepared for what he knew was “the biggest race of my life”. The Brit arrived at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last month knowing that a place on the podium would be good enough to be crowned Formula 1 world champion for the first time.

Chief rival Max Verstappen won the race. But it mattered not, because Norris kept himself in the top three and was sobbing within moments of taking the chequered flag, knowing that he had achieved what he had been working towards since he was a child. Other than a few interviews, Norris has been largely out of the public eye since his triumph, except for a couple of Instagram posts from the FIA awards ceremony where he picked up his trophy.

But the McLaren star has now returned to social media, reviving his YouTube channel for his latest ‘Landolog’. A new vlog, published on Thursday, is the first video he has published to the channel for 10 months and has already been viewed almost half-a-million times, despite having been live for less than 24 hours.

It begins with a clip from 2014 in which Norris, back then a teenager climbing the junior motorsport ladder, said in an interview: “It’s pretty much every boy’s dream to win something, and when you’re so young, you always hope or dream like you want to win it one day, but you never actually think you can.” The video then cuts to Norris in the present day, looking directly into the camera with a beaming smile as he adds: “We did it!”

The video contains plenty of behind-the-scenes footage from the days leading up to the Abu Dhabi race, with Norris narrating over the top. The Brit said: “The week leading up to the biggest race of my life… and I didn’t know how to be. I didn’t know how to act. I didn’t know how I was meant to be. I didn’t know if I was meant to be really excited or scared.

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“I thought I’d be pretty damn nervous, because I do. I get nervous every race, every qualifying, like always. That’s a normal thing. I thought it’d be a bit too chaotic for me. But, in fact, getting in the car, I actually felt pretty ready. I felt very calm. Just another day in the office. I felt ready. I still knew in my head, ‘This is it and the time has come’.”

Explaining his emotions at the end of the race, Norris recalled: “I pictured my mom in the garage. That was the first time, the first moment the whole year I just about started to realise what was happening, what was about to happen. And all I did was picture the garage, picture my parents there, my brother, my sisters, all in the garage for the final four corners.”

He rounded off the video with a message of gratitude to the fans who have supported him since his F1 debut seven years ago. Norris said: “Thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to represent you, to do my best for you every single weekend. Thanks for being there for me. And I’ll go lift the trophy while I’m thinking of everyone that’s been part of this journey together.”