Norris poised to break historic F1 record in Qatar

In a season already humming with the possibility of British sporting history, Lando Norris arrives in Qatar standing at the crossroads of Formula 1’s future and its storied past.

The 26-year-old McLaren driver is on the brink not only of possibly winning the 2025 world championship, but of surpassing one of his team’s most steadfast records – a marker laid down in an era of V10 thunder and silver-liveried dominance.

This weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix will see Norris take to the grid for his 151st race with McLaren, a figure that pushes him past David Coulthard’s long-standing tally for the most Grand Prix starts with the Woking outfit.

The Scot, who spent eight seasons at McLaren from 1997 to 2004, set the benchmark at 150 – a number that once felt untouchable amid the sport’s revolving-door driver market and the team’s fluctuating fortunes.

Yet here stands Norris, still not through his sixth season, having become the modern face of McLaren’s renaissance.

His tenure, defined by consistency, technical clarity, and a steadily rising competitive arc, has rewritten the expectations placed on a young driver tethered to a long-term project.

The record he breaks this Sunday is steeped in the company of giants: Jenson Button, Mika Häkkinen, Lewis Hamilton, and Alain Prost — all members of McLaren’s century-start club. Norris now becomes the newest entrant to that lineage, surpassing them all in longevity with a single team.

But the symbolism runs deeper. As McLaren chases a return to glory in the Drivers’ Championship for the first time since Hamilton’s 2008 triumph, Norris’s milestone arrives as confirmation that stability and patience – both rare in Formula 1’s hyper-accelerated climate – can still define a team’s revival story.

Title Pressure – But History Regardless

This historic record comes wrapped in a championship narrative of its own. Norris enters Qatar with 366 points, holding a 24-point advantage over both Oscar Piastri and Max Verstappen, who sit tied behind him.

While he cannot clinch the title in Saturday’s Sprint, he can seal the crown in the Grand Prix if he’s at least 26 points ahead of Piastri and Verstappen after Sunday’s race.

• Read also: Norris admits Turn 1 fail at Las Vegas GP ‘pretty embarrassing’

It would make him McLaren’s first title-winning driver in 17 years and the 11th Briton to take motorsport’s most coveted crown.

Even so, the record awaiting him in Lusail stands independent of championship arithmetic. Whether the title is decided in Qatar or pushed to an Abu Dhabi showdown, Norris’s 151st McLaren start plants his name into the team’s stately history books – a reminder that some achievements quietly outlast the season they occur in.

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