Lando Norris has received a brief analysis from a fellow Formula 1 champion for the 2026 season. Damon Hill has warned about the gravity of being the current world champion within McLaren.
The British driver comes into this championship with the difficult mission of defending the title he won in 2025. Moreover, he is the first name to bring the championship to McLaren since Lewis Hamilton in 2008.
Furthermore, Norris has become only the 35th driver in history to have become a champion in Formula 1. With his current status within the papaya team, the competitor can be seen as more valuable than his teammate Oscar Piastri, but for Hill, this pressure does not help in any way.
“I think the team trusts both of them. But, definitely, when you are a world champion, you have a little more prestige. When I went from Williams to Arrows, they said: ‘My God, we have a world champion on our team’,” he said on the Stay on Track podcast.
“He must know something of value, but that gravity is sometimes misinterpreted, because I didn’t know everything. I didn’t know how to design the car, but I worked with people like Patrick Head and Adrian Newey, who knew where they were going and how to do it. So leadership is a very important part of this, and as a driver, you can also instill this within the team,” he concluded.
