It is Norris who stands on the verge of superstardom though. While much is made of his privileged childhood, the fact that his super-rich father funded his progress through motorsport’s ranks – not only providing him with new tyres, multiple series at the same time, and exclusive track time, but a manager and a trainer since the age of 12 – it is noticeable that none of Norris’s old rivals begrudge him his current success. “Everyone can say he had the best equipment,” one of Norris’s junior rivals told The Times recently, “but a lot of kids had a lot of money but didn’t have the will to put the effort in. The work ethic was amazing.”
Norris himself has always been anxious not to come across as entitled. He makes no bones about the leg-up his father’s wealth gave him – not unusual in the world of F1 – but he is proud of the fact that he took the final step himself. More than most F1 drivers, Norris is sensitive to the way he is perceived. He clearly wants to be a good person, grounded. After an unhappy time at school (“I wasn’t bullied or anything. I just never really integrated,” he said in that same Telegraph Magazine interview last year), he attaches a lot of importance to friendships and loyalty. Which is why it was touching to hear him speak so warmly about his family and friends in attendance this week.
Ironically, there is a school of thought that Norris actually performs worse when his parents are at races. That may stem from the fact that Adam, who attends virtually every race, missed his son’s maiden win in Miami last year. Also perhaps the rather fraught scenes at the McLaren motorhome in Qatar last weekend when Norris’s clearly emotional parents called their son back to give him a last hug and a kiss as he made his way off the track, shell-shocked following McLaren’s strategy nightmare, on Sunday evening.
No matter, Norris wants them here. Win or lose, they have been part of his journey and Norris is nothing if not a good boy. In Thursday’s press conference, he smiled as he spoke about some of his mum’s quirks – the colourful clothes, the ribbons in her hair, the superstitions. “I mean, my mum does many things – different shoes, odd-coloured shoes, whatever, she does a lot of different stuff,” Norris said after Verstappen revealed that his mother lights a candle for him before every race weekend. “She doesn’t, I think, do anything that I know of that’s like Max said. But yeah, she also tells me similar things: stay away from the others and be careful. I guess it’s just a different mentality. You know, like Max’s mum was a racing driver, so I think she understands probably more than our mums might do. So, I think they get maybe a bit more scared because they don’t understand everything that goes on quite as well. But yeah, I love my mum, so it’s good.”
It is going to be a stressful watch for Norris’s entourage in the McLaren garage on Sunday. But at the end of it, win or lose, they will be together. “This has been my whole life,” Norris reflected on Thursday of what it would mean to him. “It’s everything I’ve worked towards my whole life. So, it would mean the world to me. It would mean the world to everyone who’s supported me and pushed me for the last, what is it, 16 years of my life, in terms of trying to get to this point. It would mean everything. It would mean my life until now has been a success, and I’ve accomplished that dream I had when I was a kid. Other than that, I don’t know what else to say. It’s a reward for a lot of hard work that goes into things, and I think it will go to whoever deserves it the most.”
