Lewis Hamilton’s Lando Norris comment speaks volumes after British Grand Prix

Lewis Hamilton has made abundantly clear what he thinks of Lando Norris after the British Grand Prix. The two were the first pair of Brits to stand on the podium at Silverstone since 1999 when David Coulthard won the race with Eddie Irvine second. Norris ended P2 in his much improved McLaren – which before this race had finished outside of the points more than times this season than in them – with Hamilton P3. 

Norris had before Sunday claimed five third-placed finishes and one second, in Monza in 2021, but this was a new career high with it his home race. But while the 23-year-old has raced 92 times in Formula One, he has still yet to claim an elusive race win. He came agonisingly close in 2021 before rain ruined his race when he was leading.

By contrast, no one has managed more victories in F1 history than Hamilton who boasts 103 although none since December 2021 in Saudi Arabia. And the 38-year-old, a seven-time world champion, is pretty confident that Norris will go on to record plenty of wins in his career.

Hamilton said at the British Grand Prix, addressing the audience on stage a few hours after the race, that Norris is “a future world champion for sure”. And that opinion speaks volumes about his fellow Briton.

Few are more qualified than Hamilton to know what it takes to be an F1 world champion. And while Norris’ long wait for a victory continues, clearly his talents have not gone unnoticed by his colleagues. 

The belief that he could regularly contend for poles, podiums and wins is obviously one shared across F1, and says it all about just how good a driver he is.

Similarly to Hamilton’s Mercedes team-mate George Russell when he was at Williams, Norris has often had to operate with machinery that does not match his racecraft. Russell has previously named his fellow Brit as a potential future champion too.

While McLaren legend and two-time F1 champion Mika Hakkinen even said of Lando: “He’s super-talented, no question about it. He’s on the same level as [Charles] Leclerc, Verstappen and [Carlos] Sainz. He’s on a very high-level speed-wise.”

Despite their improvements at Silverstone, with Norris’ team-mate Oscar Piastri finishing fourth, McLaren clearly have a lot of work to do before they can consistently rival Verstappen and co out front however. Norris trails his good friend by 213 points after just 10 races of a 22-race season.

And he warned post-British Grand Prix: “We do have a poor car and I would say pretty terrible in the slow-speed corners, extremely difficult to drive. I feel as if we’re getting excited and I accept that.

“But we’re going to go to a couple of tracks coming up where I’m sure people are going to be saying: ‘What have you done now? Like, how has it got so bad all of a sudden?’.” What’s for sure though is that once McLaren do have the right car, they have a driver – or even two, with Piastri – capable of delivering results in qualifying and races.

There’s even the prospect, should Mercedes and McLaren both develop their cars sufficiently, that Norris and Russell could join Verstappen in the title fight. Hamilton will be hoping before then that he can snatch a record-breaking eighth title – but if it’s McLaren who deny him, given how much he has lauded his childhood team the past few days, he might not mind quite as much.