Lando Norris on Silverstone, Mental Health and the People Who Keep Him Grounded

There are races on the Formula 1 calendar that drivers approach with strategic calm. Silverstone, for Lando Norris, is not one of them.

"It's my favourite race of the year," he tells us. "It's the one I look forward to always. It's the one that excites me the most because it's my home race. It's the one with all my fans, my family, my friends. It's the British Grand Prix. It's one of the biggest races of the year. It's an amazing track."

It is also, uniquely, a home race for the team. "A lot of the family and friends and the people who work on building my car come to the race as well," Norris says. That shared sense of ownership — driver, team, country — is what made his 2024 victory hit differently.

"It was one of the coolest feelings I ever had in my career and in my life," he says of seeing the British fans erupt as he crossed the line. "You feel like you've really done something for them — if you're representing your country in a way that's not the feeling you grow up getting used to. When you feel like you're supporting your country and representing the country, that's quite a special feeling."

The pressure that comes with a home crowd is real, but so is the lift. "Lots of pressure," he admits, "but at the same time lots of excitement — because you have the whole country supporting you."

Norris has become one of the most visible advocates for mental health inside the paddock. Asked about the daily habits that keep him steady, his answer starts, perhaps predictably, with a screen.

"The most important thing is to stay off social media too much," he says. "A little bit is fine and I still use it a little bit every now and then — certainly not every day, and certainly not morning and evening. You waste so much of your life just scrolling and looking at your phone. It's just not a good thing."

In his line of work, he explains, the feed is a double-edged sword. "You see a lot of great things said about you, you also see sometimes the complete opposite. And dealing with that was not something I was always the best in."

So he did what elite athletes increasingly do: he built a team around the problem. "I also worked with specialists in mental health, psychologists, to improve how I'm able to read things, to understand things, how I'm able to have more self-confidence." Winning the championship the previous year, he acknowledges, "was a big help in this kind of situation" — but the internal work sits underneath the results, not the other way around.

There is no template, he insists. "Everyone is different. I don't think there's one thing that everyone does and they're fine. That's not how it works in the world. You have to really find what works for you."

For Norris, what works is people. "Always having a very good group of people around me. My friends are always there to support me — text me, call me, whatever. Same vice versa. I love to spend time with my friends. Really that's one of the biggest things I started to do more — try and spend more time away with my friends, travelling, doing things. This is the thing that really brings me the most joy in my life."

His method, distilled: understand your triggers, remove or reshape what makes you unhappy, and build a baseline you can rely on. "There's no easy answer, because nothing is easy in life. You still need discipline, you still need to go to the gym, exercise, work, do these things. Not everything comes towards you in life — so you still have to work hard. But as long as you have a good baseline where every time you go home you're excited to sleep, or spend time with your friends, or watch a bit of TV or read a book — and excited to wake up the next day and try and do it again, or try and do better — that's a good mentality to have."

His single loudest piece of advice? "The biggest thing is just delete social media," he laughs, "or reduce it as much as you can."

Ask Norris what he loves most about being British and the answer is not a place or a memory — it is a lineage.

"There are just a lot of very special athletes — some of the best athletes in the world come from the UK," he says. "Maybe every country says the same thing, to be honest. But I feel like in so many different sports, some of the best in the world are British."

That mattered to him as a kid. "It's always good to see as a kid. For me growing up, I saw Lewis Hamilton. But at the same time — whether it's golf, or Andy Murray, and these kind of people — there are so many sports where you can turn on the TV and see a British athlete competing very highly. That's always a very good inspiration to have as a kid, because you're able to almost support someone in every line of the sport."

It is also, he feels, a responsibility he now carries. "My responsibility is within the world of Formula 1. Luckily, there are four of us in Formula 1 that are British. So representing my country is something I'm very proud of."

Norris built part of his public identity around gaming and sim racing. Ask him about it today and the answer is honest — and a little revealing.

"Not so much lately, honestly. The weather's been too hot. I actually like to go outside and play golf, just go for lunch, dinners with my friends, go out on a boat, just walk around."

"I drifted away a little bit from gaming the last three or four years, honestly. I used to love it and I used to do it every day. I wish I could do it every day. But now I really enjoy my life away from that — meeting people, experiences of travelling, meeting people. Just almost doing something new every day."

"Gaming is repetitive. It's the same stuff every day, and really when I go to bed at the end I feel like I wasted a day of my life. So I drifted away from this. I'm excited the next day to go with my friends somewhere and experience something new, try something different. That's a much better way, in my opinion, to live and spend my life."

Across the conversation, a picture emerges that is very different from the highlight-reel version of a modern Formula 1 star. Norris is proud of the flag on his overalls, deliberate about the people he lets close, honest about the days he used to spend behind a controller and now spends on a golf course, and unusually articulate about the mental cost of a very public career.

As he puts it himself: understand what triggers you, build a baseline you can come home to, keep the right people close — and, when in doubt, put the phone down.