Lando Norris: “You don’t have to have a killer instinct to be world champion” | Lando Norris

Hare the credentials as a potential Formula 1 world champion have been questioned but Lando Norris It is not a disturbance. With an almost surprising level of honesty, very unusual in sport, the British pilot considered conventional wisdom and its implications and rejected it. The fact that he wants to win is no doubt, but he will not allow his sense of himself to be subjected to the altar of success at all costs.

“I feel that there is a very prescribed version of how people say that a world champion must be – excessively aggressive,” he says in his McLaren The hospitality of the team on a cold day in Suzuka before the Japanese Grand Prix of this weekend. “I want to win a championship. I would only prefer to be a good person and try to do well. I will do everything possible to win a championship, but perhaps I will not sacrifice in my life as some others, in terms of who I am as a person and I have the” fucking “mentality that people say that you still have.

The 25 -year -old, in his seventh season in F1, is in the opening phase of the most important year of his career. McLaren is currently the fastest car on the grid and Norris has already obtained a victory and a second place in the two opening rounds and leads the World Championship. It is likely that he will face a formidable fight with his teammate Oscar Plastri, the young Australian talented, who claimed the victory at the last round in China.

However Norris is the focal point, the favorite, who faces a burst of debate on the fact that he has what he needs to take the title, even with 22 other races to go. Last season he was not given a quarter of a ruthless Max Verstappen, who employed an aggressive and defensive guide at Norris’ expenses to take the title, leading to a widespread interrogation if it were sufficiently crossed to face the Dutchman.

The fact that he has faced this equanimity is impressive, while he also matures his battles with a lack of trust and depression, and how to deal with these challenges and make them public has meant more for him than anything obtained so far in F1.

There is an awareness here of the wider picture. It is relaxed, without fear of snatching the most comfortable topics of aerodynamic force and socket levels, calmly chewing a banana while considering its answers that occur for a long time and with thought. So what about the instinct killer, the presumably essential ruthlessness requested to the best sportsmen and so loved in F1?

“What people want you to believe is that you have to think you are the best in the world, you have to think you can beat everyone,” he says. “This is a great attitude to have, but I don’t think it’s the only attitude you have to have if you want to be a champion.

“I just want to enjoy my life. It is a kind of attitude that perhaps is not an assassin instinct. I don’t think you have to have a world champion. I want to prove that you can be a world champion and I don’t have yet. Who I am.”

What can develop in an intense battle with pussies or even defender, the Verstappen champion is likely that this approach will be tested, but Norris is adamant that he will not take the path easy and obscure his personality under a simplistic swordsman show.

“I don’t have to show all those I have that type of attitude,” he says. “I feel like people go around trying to put in front and show people you have that attitude. I can easily go and pretend to have a killer instinct and behave like a little a fuck that people could give that perception.

“But there are some things that I would not do that other champions have done. I don’t have an assassin instinct as probably most of the pilots or most of the samples because I have not been bred in that way.”

Norris is clearly freed from the feeling of being able and should be opened on this even knowing that these words can be rejected if it is found lacking.

He admits that he has the lack of trust as a child. He grew up in Bristol, where his parents, Cisca and Adamo, have a little reluctant to indulge his need for speed after being infatuated with a quad bike that bought him when he was five years old. In fact they were so worried about his safety as he darted around the garden that sold him, with the great anguish of the young Norris. However, he had not been denied him and found his call when he took the kart.

Norris was happy with his company and at the beginning he did to run not thinking about his career, but simply because he was fun. However, even an relentless march among the ranks has left him questioning himself. He has never spent more than a year in any category from 10 years onwards and with every success, the new year would have seen a new challenge, a restoration in which the opposition seemed bigger and faster.

“I’ve never seen myself as being good like Lewis (Hamilton) or even the guys I grew up with,” he explains. “Lewis, George (Russell) or Charles (Leclerc) or Fernando (Alonso), Seb (Vettel), these guys. I have never seen myself in a position to be in F1 in the first place.

“For me it was nice to be able to run against them, more than I want to show that I am better.”

Previously he raised his struggles with mental health At the beginning of his period in F1of doubts favored in part by this lack of trust, but has played a role of what it is; A decidedly self -critical character.

“When I had the negative thoughts of everything and my performances, then I would have started to think negatively for the following weekend when it hasn’t arrived yet,” he says. “It was visible to see outside how negative I was and I am still. I am still the type of boy who will say:” Today I did a shitty job and I did terrible and I was not good enough. “

“Not many other people will probably admit that type of things, but that I will always be. I was having a toll on me and my well -being.”

This led to the depression for which he looked for help for which he led him to take a look at himself and then start to change it, in particular in the middle of last year when McLaren was updated to become a contender for the title and Norris entered the fight with Verstappen. The former world champion Nico Rosberg also contacted him with advice, revealing that he had crossed similar circumstances.

“I am still very hard with myself, probably just a little less publicly now than I was in the past,” says Norris. “But I can also face things better than me.”

He believes he has come out stronger, which in turn puts him better for the challenge of the title this year. Yet it is fascinating that Norris also feels talking about the subject was of such great importance, but also in doing so he felt uncomfortable.

“The worst piece of everything is that I know how lucky I am traveling around the world, to be paid well. I can almost do what I want in my life and I know how lucky I am in that position,” he says. “So I feel as if I did not have the right sometimes to perhaps complain or to say certain things as much as other people.

“But for me, it was certainly a victory that talked about it because of the amount of messages I received from people, saying how much to have someone in my position and be able to relate that he helped them.”

His decision had effects of vast scope both for himself and for others. “Even if it was just a message, this made me happier because when it was said that you saved their life because they wanted to end their life. I had several; this makes me happier than winning a race,” he says. “This is only my perception of life, it is a greater impact. Because you made the difference. Winning a race does not make the difference.”

It remains a lot to do, but with credit to Norris, a good boy could still take the title under his condition.