MONACO — Lando Norris felt like he was on an awkward first date when he first opened his latest contract negotiations with McLaren CEO Zak Brown.
On Wednesday, McLaren announced the 21-year-old had signed a new multi-year deal with the team for next year and beyond.
Norris has been a part of the team since 2017 and first raced for McLaren in F1 in 2019, but said he still felt awkward broaching the subject of a new contract with Brown.
“I didn’t really know what to do, or what to say — I was talking a little bit about the future and I was like, ‘about those future years, is it something you want to start talking about now or later in the season?’,” Norris said. “It was literally like I don’t know when is a good time, or how to bring it up.
“It was like a guy talking to a girl for the first time. It was a bit awkward, I didn’t know how to start the conversation.
“But I think at that time they had already started talking about it as a team between Zak and Andreas [Seidl, McLaren team principal] and it was something that I wanted to get out of the way as soon as possible.
“So we started talking and it all flowed from there, but it was just a bit of a weird one for me to bring up, because I had not necessarily been in that position before.
“This was the first one where my contract was coming right to the end and I was like ‘I don’t know what to do!’
“It was kind of funny but I’m happy we got to the deal in the end.”
Norris said he had no conversations with other teams about moving elsewhere and was in no doubt about committing his future to McLaren.
“I think we probably took a couple of people by surprise by announcing it so early in the season,” he said.
“I didn’t need to [speak to anyone else], it wasn’t like I was searching for it.
“I was speaking about it for quite a while already and both of us wanted to get it out of the way quite early on.”