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"Smart or Scared?" that's the question everyone has had on their mind ever since Lando Norris announced his contract extension with McLaren. The 'smart or scared' bit was not for the driver signing an extension but for admitting in an interview soon after that a move to Red Bull alongside Max Verstappen might not have been the smartest thing to do.
That answer from Lando Norris has been picked up and turned into something that it clearly isn't. Some fans have claimed that the McLaren driver is 'scared' to be teamed up with Max Verstappen at Red Bull. Fan discourse is one thing and sometimes it's understandable when that happens but it's been a surprise to see a couple of reputed publications take a similar position when it comes to Norris' decision of staying with McLaren.
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On the issue of Lando Norris signing an extension with McLaren, there's a clear nuance that seems to have been missed by everyone accusing the young driver of being scared. Let's dissect the fan discourse to see what's been missed in all of this.
Comparisons with Lewis Hamilton and others are inaccurate
Arguably, the biggest critique faced by Norris in the 'scared' debate is equating the position he finds himself in with the position Lewis Hamilton found himself in at McLaren in 2007 or Charles Leclerc at Ferrari in 2019 or for that matter George Russell in 2022. The issue with such comparisons is that in those cases, the drivers were moving from a much smaller team to a well-established team on the grid.
To add to this, they were in essence managed by the parent teams already and the move was nothing more than a logical progression. Lewis Hamilton in 2007 was a reigning GP2 champion who was moving to McLaren, a team that had managed his junior career. Charles Leclerc was racing in Sauber in 2018 and he was moving to Ferrari in 2019, a team whose academy he was a part of.
And finally, George Russell moved from a backmarker in Williams in 2022 to Mercedes, a team that managed his career from the beginning. These were young drivers who were not in established teams, moving significantly up the grid. However, the case for Lando Norris is something entirely different.
Norris is already an established driver in F1. Since making his debut in 2019, he's grown with the team and is currently looked at as a team leader. McLaren's growth over the years has his hard work written all over it and when the team has finally reached a point where it could compete at the front, why would he leave?
This is the time for Norris to reap the benefits of the position the team finds itself in. To add to this, the last F1 season showed that McLaren's growth rate was stunning at the very least. The team did a brilliant job of turning around a season where it was struggling at one stage to become a consistent threat to Red Bull.
This is a project that Lando Norris believes in and has invested a lot in. So, it doesn't make sense to leave it when he knows he could win and challenge for the title with the team.
Everyone missed that Lando Norris had a contract until 2025
There's a key detail that just adds to the nuance of why Lando Norris chose to extend his stay at McLaren and not give the Red Bull opportunity much thought. That reason has a lot to do with the fact that the young driver already had a contract until 2025, a contract in which there was no breakout clause.
That being the case, the earliest the driver could sign with Red Bull is in 2026. This is where context is important and one has to understand what the ecosystem could be at the time. 2026 will be the first year of the new regulations, in which the power unit specifications are going to change.
At that point, one has to question if Red Bull would still be the benchmark in F1. In the last few years, whenever there has been a major regulation change, it has led to a change in the pecking order. This happened from 2008 to 2009, it happened again from 2013 to 2014, and from 2021 to 2022. Historical data alone should be indicative enough of the fact that there is a possibility that the opposition would catch up with Red Bull in 2026.
If that is the case, then would it be the most prudent thing for Lando Norris to go to the Austrian team and partner Max Verstappen? In all likelihood, that doesn't appear to be the right thing to do. When you take this into consideration, it becomes more and more clear that there was more nuance involved when it comes to Norris taking a punt on McLaren.
Lando Norris or any other racing driver is not scared of teaming up with another driver but sometimes there is more than what meets the eye in the decisions they take.
