Former Formula 1 driver Johnny Herbert believes Lando Norris’ title success last season can be attributed to one moment hat threatened to derail his year.
Starting 2025 with a dominant win, the following races were marred by mistakes including wrecking his sprint qualifying lap in China, and crashing out during Saudi Arabia qualifying.
The knock on effect of these early season issues impacted the Briton’s confidence, leading to more mistakes and a growing deficit to team-mate and title rival Oscar Piastri.
He arguably hit his lowest moment in Canada where he and Piastri collided in the closing stages, before he won three out of the next four races.
Herbert believes the reason behind Norris’ recovery is because of a radical change of mindset in the face of adversity,
“For me, Lando grew massively last season, and really did learn having to stop himself making, on the race-track, some crazy decision-making,” Herbert said the Stay on Track podcast.
Bouncing back from low moments key to Lando Norris’ title recovery
Highlighting Canada as the turning point, Herbert hinted Norris has yet to hit his peak, his title likely to propel him to further success.
“Let’s go to Canada when he crashed into the pit-wall trying to pass his team-mate, and those sort of incidents are something you should never, ever really get yourself into”, he said.
“So he’ll learn from that, be stronger from that, and have we seen the best of Lando Norris? No, definitely not, I still think there is more to come.
“That world championship will be very powerful, personally for him and the energy he takes into the car, but he’s still got to be wary of his team-mate, but you’ve also got to work out how best to make the tea work, because it didn’t work, not at its best last year.”
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