Former Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has said Lando Norris “would have fitted very well to us” as he revealed Formula 1 contract negotiations with the 2025 World Champion.
Norris secured his maiden, and McLaren’s first Drivers’ title since 2008, by a slender margin of just two points over Max Verstappen at the Yas Marina Circuit, last year.
Marko, who himself called it quits on his 20-year tenure with the Milton Keynes-based outfit at the end of the 2025 campaign, has now rendered a telling insight into potential talks with the Briton.
Norris signed up to the McLaren junior programme in 2017, but could have very well been driving a Toro Rosso (now Racing Bulls) if fate had decided it that way in 2016.
Despite these contract negotiations not bearing fruit, it would now appear that a switch was once again on the cards in 2022, before the Briton signed a multi-year deal with the Woking-based team instead.
“We had, at a very early stage, a negotiation with Lando Norris, and in the end, we didn’t get him,” Marko told Tom Clarkson recently on the Beyond the Grid podcast.
In fact, the Austrian motorsport veteran went as far as claiming that the 26-year-old would have worked like clockwork if he had signed up for the Red Bull project.
“Yes, I think he would have fitted very well to us,” he asserted. “But on the other hand, we can’t have everybody. We are looking for champions.”
Why Norris chose McLaren over Red Bull
The start of the ground effects era, in 2022, couldn’t have opened on a worse note for Norris and McLaren.
CEO, Zak Brown had publicly conceded to have missed its development targets with the MCL36 and started the season last in the competitive pecking order.
Despite this, Norris chose to stick with the team, who handed him his F1 debut in 2019, over signing a deal with Red Bull, who had a highly competitive package at the time.
In hindsight, this was a master-stroke as far as Norris’ title credentials are concerned. But back then, it was all about reciprocating the faith McLaren had put into Norris’ career.
“It’s more just I was coming to the end of my contract, and it wasn’t like we [Red Bull and I] were talking heavily,” Norris had told Auto Motor und Sport back in 2022.
“Before I’ve ever spoken to anyone else, my talks have always been with McLaren first, that’s always how it goes.
“As much as sometimes you might like what could happen, the best thing for me is signing the contract that I have now, just having that confidence that you’re going to be in F1, and the knowledge that you’re going to be in F1 for three, four, five years.
“For me that’s like the best feeling, just because it makes you more relaxed, more comfortable in the environment that you’re in.”
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