Lando Norris: McLaren's F1 world champion on 'favourite' George Russell's title status and hope for strong 2026 defence

Lando Norris "completely believes" 2026 title favourite George Russell will join him in F1's world championship-winning ranks at some point - but the McLaren driver says his own ambition to win again this year is undimmed.

Norris is preparing to start an F1 campaign as the reigning world champion for the first time after ending McLaren's 17-year wait for another drivers' title in Abu Dhabi two months ago.

The 26-year-old started last year as the bookmakers' championship favourite ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen, but it is Russell who currently holds that status this time around with four weeks to go until the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with Mercedes widely tipped to start F1's new era of chassis and power-unit regulations strongly.

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Playfully labelling his long-time friend and generational rival Russell as the "massive favourite", Norris told Sky Sports News: "Me and George get along well.

"It's not like we talk every day. But I think we have a lot of respect for each other.

"He shows that towards me and I completely believe he'll win a championship in the future, whether that's this year or next year, whatever it may be.

"I've enjoyed my battles with him, and he's a lovely guy, so I've enjoyed all of it."

Speaking to the written media separately in a pre-season event at McLaren's Woking base, Norris said during an answer to a question about his contact with other drivers over the winter since becoming champion: "I spoke to Alex [Albon] and George the other day mainly because we played padel together.

"Especially with them because we kind of came into F1 [in 2019] at the same time I think it [Norris becoming champion] has created more hunger for them.

"Especially for George because he's the bookies' favourite. He's a little bit giddy at the minute! That's a great thing to see."

'I think I just have more confidence' - Norris' mindset and goals for 2026

Norris is starting his eighth season as an F1 driver and admits winning the world championship for the first time represented the achievement of his "life goal".

However, he insists he begins the 2026 campaign with the same determination to come out on top again.

"As much as I say that [achieving his life goal] I don't feel any different coming into this season," said Norris.

"I still feel like I just want to go out and win.

"It's just my baseline feeling consistently. I think it's just more in the end of the day if I don't achieve something again, I always have something that I'm very proud about and I know it's a huge achievement.

"But it's not and certainly hasn't taken away any ambition or desire to want to do it again or to come into this season and to not care about it."

Asked if he thought that approach would also have applied to multiple title winners like Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton and Verstappen, Norris said: "I can't answer on what they thought.

"I think it's quite clear that I have a different mentality and a different approach to, say, what Max has. Good or bad, you decide!

"There's a lot of things that I still admire in Max and I wish I had a little bit more of that here and there.

"I'm always trying to improve on my things. I know there's still areas that I'm not at the level I need to be.

"It's still a good level but when you're fighting these guys you need to be close to perfection.

"There's still plenty of things I want to work on and I want to be better on but the baseline level of where I'm at now is already pretty good. My motivation to win is exactly the same.

"I've definitely not lost anything and, if anything, I think I just have more confidence because I have said in interviews in the past that I'm very much a guy who has to see something to believe it, especially when it's been on anything to do with myself."

Will McLaren have the car to defend titles?

Despite the wholesale change to F1's rulebook over this winter, Norris reckons the recognised big-four teams - McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari - will remain the ones to beat in the new 24-race campaign.

However, he thinks the expected fierce development race will allow others the chance to get in the mix too.

"It's tough to say [how competitive it will be]. We've just done a couple of days," said Norris, in reference to last week's Barcelona shakedown.

"I still expect you to see the top four teams at the front, and then potentially a bit of a gap to some of the others. We've seen over the years how close the likes of Williams, Alpine and Haas have been at times, so I expect everyone to be a challenger at some point.

"Especially in the first year of a new regulation, every weekend you're going to see new bits on every single car and you're going to see the development race within F1. That's exciting and it's cool for us as drivers too. That means this year because you're going to be learning so much, you're just going to have to keep pushing the whole way."

McLaren, who are powered by Mercedes engines, are going for their third consecutive Constructors' Championship and Norris added: "I have good confidence that the team are going to produce a good car.

"There was a lot of work that started early last year having a good amount of people focusing on last year's car, the current car at the time, and a good amount of people focusing on this year's car.

"We all believe as a team that we can continue our very strong results that we've had over the past two years into our completely new regulation change.

"But we also see that there's going to be people just as quick as us and potentially quicker.

"Already from that first test, Mercedes looked very strong, Red Bull and Ferrari looked very strong, so the expectation is you're going to have the four teams being very quick as usual."

Piastri ready to implement 'lessons' from 2025 highs and lows

Speaking at the same event, team-mate Oscar Piastri said he had used F1's short winter break at home in Australia to reflect on both the "really proud" and "painful" moments from his 2025 campaign.

Piastri won seven races and led the standings for six months before a run of troubled events in the campaign's decisive final months saw him finish behind Norris and Verstappen in third.

"Some of them were nice lessons to learn, some of them were tougher lessons to learn," said Piastri, entering his fourth season of F1.

"And I think in terms of performance and being able, the peaks that I had last year was firstly a nice confidence boost and kind of a statement for myself that when I get things right and maximise my potential that I can be a very strong competitor.

"I think some of the lessons in the back half of the year, especially very different in nature, I think probably a couple of things in Austin and Mexico from a technical point of view and more of a driving point of view that let's say I hadn't been challenged on earlier in the season, so that was probably one lesson to take forward from that.

"Obviously there was a pretty long string of races where it was pretty eventful for lots of different reasons and I think just taking the lessons out of that and how I can manage those things better, how we as a team can manage those things better, that's probably one of the most important lessons from last year for me.

"And I feel like I've done a lot of good work to try and learn from that, I think the team has as well. And yeah, we'll make some tweaks, some changes to how we go about things from every aspect.

"Obviously the main one I'm probably thinking about is just how we race each other and how we go racing, but even just from a performance standpoint, a time management standpoint, I think there's a lot of lessons in various areas."

Sky Sports F1's Bahrain Testing schedule

February 11-13: Test One daily schedule

• 3pm: Final hour of track running Live
• 8pm: Testing Wrap
• 8.30pm: Ted's Testing Notebook

February 18-20: Test Two daily schedule

• 6.50am-11.05am: Morning session Live
• 11.55pm-4.10pm: Afternoon session Live
• 8pm: Testing Wrap

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