Lando Norris had a breakthrough season in 2024, securing his first Grand Prix win in Miami and adding three more victories to his name. It was also his first experience in a title fight, narrowing Verstappen’s lead to 44 points with a Sprint race win in Brazil.
However, his championship hopes unraveled the next day as a red flag and personal errors cost him in the Grand Prix. Verstappen clinched the title in Las Vegas, while Norris capped the season by securing the Constructors’ Championship for McLaren with a victory in Abu Dhabi. Crossing the finish line, Norris declared, “Next year’s going to be my year too.”
Nico Rosberg, however, believes this statement could be Norris’ first major mistake as he heads into the 2025 F1 season. The German claimed that the comments were unnecessary and will take its toll next season. In the Sky F1 podcast, he advised the Briton, “First, avoid the mistake of thinking you’re the favorite and framing anything less than victory as a failure.”
“On the one hand, we love to see it as spectators but for him, it’s probably not the best path. Like in Abu Dhabi on the cooldown lap, he said in the car, ‘next year is my year’, and that’s something that I would actually recommend him not to do because it’s just an unnecessary pressure expectation dynamic that you kick-off.” Rosberg told Sky F1. ”
“That was one of the keys to me winning my World Championship, and especially for someone like Lando, who is, I would say, not the very, very strongest, most settled mentally – I was that profile, also a lot of inner demons and doubts, and always glass empty, rather than glass full – and therefore, for him, I really highly recommend that he would take it race by race,” he added.
After four intense years of battling Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes, Rosberg finally achieved his dream of winning the F1 drivers’ championship in 2016. With his experience of competing against the very best, he offers valuable advice to Lando Norris for his 2025 title challenge.
Rosberg’s core advice to Norris was to ease the pressure on himself. Approaching each race with the goal of performing well and steadily building a strong title challenge over the season may be Norris’s best strategy to claim the crown against formidable rivals like Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen, and Lewis Hamilton.
Mohd Faisal Hakak is a sports author from Kashmir. He likes to keep tabs on the sporting world with a keen interest in football, motorsports, NBA, and other marquee sports. He is a science graduate from Islamia College Srinagar.
