With Norris's contract extension, McLaren has the best alternative to Verstappen in-house

On Friday morning, Lando Norris and McLaren announced that the Briton has signed a new deal. With this new contract, Norris will stay with McLaren through 2030. Norris joined McLaren in 2017 as part of the junior program, then made his F1 debut for the team in 2019. He has remained loyal to that team ever since.

In doing so, Norris is taking a page from his friend Max Verstappen. Like the Dutchman, Norris appears to have little desire to switch teams. Whereas the previous generation of drivers tended to move around, this generation seems more inclined to trust what they have. Norris, Verstappen, and Charles Leclerc have all stayed loyal to their teams for years, even through leaner periods.

Lewis Hamilton suggested that this is the easy route - sticking with the team where you know everything - but is it really? Being successful multiple times with one team across different eras is something no F1 driver has ever managed. The drivers high on the list of world titles did it with different teams (Hamilton, Fangio, Schumacher), or with one team but only in a single dominant spell, like Sebastian Vettel.

In 2026, Norris once again demonstrated his greatest strength: getting better every year. He became world champion in 2025 and perhaps not in 2026, but the Briton seems to have taken another step forward in his development this year as well. He makes fewer mistakes and is notably more consistent across the board than he was a year ago.

In this way, Norris visibly adds something new to his toolkit each year, bringing him ever closer to the very top. A once-in-a-generation talent like Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton - no, Norris is not that. He acknowledges this himself, often evident in the admiration he regularly expresses for those two. Yet he edges closer step by step, simply by getting a bit better every year.

For McLaren, this is also the best possible deal. Of course Zak Brown made an attempt to bring in Max Verstappen, but he wasn’t interested. With Verstappen off the table, it’s only logical to secure Norris for longer. Beyond Verstappen, there are few drivers who are truly and significantly better than Norris, and with a world title to his name, he seems to have found a new level from which McLaren can benefit for years to come.