Lando Norris reveals emotional reaction after 'pivotal moment' in F1 title fight

Lando Norris has said he "cried a little bit" after securing pole position for the Monaco Grand Prix, having vanquished his early-season demons over one lap.

The Briton ultimately won his first F1 drivers' championship this year, defeating Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri in a three-way showdown at the year-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

However, it was an up-and-down — and then up again — season for the McLaren driver, who endured difficult spells over the first half of the campaign, especially in qualifying.

In the end, he beat Verstappen by just two points and his team-mate by 13, having put together a strong final nine rounds to overturn Piastri's comfortable 34-point advantage coming out of the Dutch Grand Prix, where the 26-year-old had retired through mechanical unreliability.

His season was also punctuated by landmark victories, in Monaco and in front of his home crowd at Silverstone.

"I would have loved to have made my life a bit easier and just won it earlier next time," the new F1 drivers' champion told the BBC's F1 Chequered Flag Podcast in reflection.

"But it's always more exciting when it goes down to the final race, final few laps. It's more exciting for everyone...

"But I won ones [races this season] that people have dreamt of winning, like they're some of the most incredible ones."

One minute, nine seconds

Norris has always been quick over one lap, but that ability seemed to desert him early in the year, as he struggled to unlock his natural pace in the MCL39 over the opening rounds of the 2025 campaign.

It resulted in numerous mistakes in qualifying, which saw him fall behind Piastri in the drivers' championship battle.

By the time the paddock reached Monaco for the eighth round of the year, his once 23-point advantage over his team-mate was a 13-point deficit.

But then a small change flourished into a sliding doors moment for Norris. Opting to turn his lap time delta information off his steering wheel dashboard, he freed himself to clinch a first pole since the opening weekend of the season.

The decision proved transformative over the remaining 16 rounds of the year, as the catalyst for a reinvigorated title fight.

"The lap I did in Monaco in qualifying was the only other time, probably in the last 10 years, that I cried a little bit over something, because there I proved myself wrong," the 11-time grand prix winner said in reference to his display of unconcealed emotion upon crossing the line as champion at the Yas Marina Circuit.

"There was not one other moment this season that I proved myself wrong. Because I had that bad run of results, I just couldn't perform in qualifying.

"Qualifying has always been my strong suit, my best... It's been my strength since I was in karting — all my qualifying results are my thing, and they weren't at the beginning of the season.

"So when I went to the hardest track to a qualifying lap on, I turned off my delta for the first time that weekend, so I couldn't see if I was on a better lap, worse lap, whatever it was, [and] it's not been my best track in the past.

"For me to then go there and put that lap I put in at the end of qualifying was one of the best moments of my career, in a way, because it was the time I almost doubted myself the most, ever, in the most important season that it turned out to be, so."

Norris — who has often been criticised for how he conducts himself in the media, with the suggestion that his honesty undermines him, creating added scrutiny and exposing a perceived weakness in his mental approach — explained how that one moment reshaped his entire perspective.

"But that one lap, one minute [and] nine seconds was all it needed for me to flip everything and turn that thought of: 'I just don't know if I've got this' to 'I can definitely do this'," he said. "And that was a pivotal moment for me up here [in his head]."