MONACO — Lando Norris felt like he was on an awkward first date when he first opened his latest contract negotiations with McLaren CEO Zak Brown.
On Wednesday, McLaren announced the 21-year-old had signed a new multi-year deal with the team for next year and beyond.
Norris has been a part of the team since 2017 and first raced for McLaren in F1 in 2019, but said he still felt awkward broaching the subject of a new contract with Brown.
« I didn’t really know what to do, or what to say — I was talking a little bit about the future and I was like, ‘about those future years, is it something you want to start talking about now or later in the season?’, » Norris said. « It was literally like I don’t know when is a good time, or how to bring it up.
« It was like a guy talking to a girl for the first time. It was a bit awkward, I didn’t know how to start the conversation.
« But I think at that time they had already started talking about it as a team between Zak and Andreas [Seidl, McLaren team principal] and it was something that I wanted to get out of the way as soon as possible.
« So we started talking and it all flowed from there, but it was just a bit of a weird one for me to bring up, because I had not necessarily been in that position before.
« This was the first one where my contract was coming right to the end and I was like ‘I don’t know what to do!’
« It was kind of funny but I’m happy we got to the deal in the end. »
Norris said he had no conversations with other teams about moving elsewhere and was in no doubt about committing his future to McLaren.
« I think we probably took a couple of people by surprise by announcing it so early in the season, » he said.
« I didn’t need to [speak to anyone else], it wasn’t like I was searching for it.
« I was speaking about it for quite a while already and both of us wanted to get it out of the way quite early on. »
https://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/31472013/norris-starting-mclaren-talks-felt-awkward-first-date
