Brown confident Norris would have been snapped up by F1 rival

McLaren chief Zak Brown is confident Lando Norris would have been snapped up by a Formula 1 rival for 2019 had the team not opted to promote the 18-year-old into a race seat for next season.

McLaren confirmed on Monday that junior programme member Norris would be making his full F1 debut with the team next year, completing its race line-up alongside Carlos Sainz Jr.

Norris has won titles at every level through his junior career, and was known to be subject to interest from other teams even for 2018. Toro Rosso was understood to have made an approach to McLaren for Norris as a potential replacement for Brendon Hartley over the summer.

McLaren Racing CEO Brown felt confident that another outfit would have made a swoop to sign Norris into a race seat for 2019 had he not been able to make the step up at Woking, but denied this pressured the team into making a decision.

“We knew that he would have been snapped up by another team, but ultimately we were always on an ‘around the summer break’ timeline,” Brown explained.

“We weren’t pressured by that or didn’t make a decision driven by that, but we’re fully aware that if he wasn’t going to be driving for us next year he would be driving for someone else.

“I assume it would have been Toro Rosso. Based on the phone calls I got, I think there was more than one team interested in him.”

Brown said as recently as two days before making the announcement that McLaren was also considering Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon, and incumbent driver Stoffel Vandoorne for the seat were the team to feel that Norris was not ready to make the step up.

“All the names, I’ve been open about it, those were all conversations we had, in the event we felt Lando was up for it,” Brown said.

“We were always down the path of, hence being our reserve driver, Lando’s who we intend to put in for next year, but we wanted to see how he would mature over the year.

“So in those instances you always want to have other plans in place or conversations going. We think all these drivers are very good race car drivers and were under consideration.

“But we’ve got the guy we wanted. We just wanted to be very diligent in our decision analysis of whether we felt he was ready to go.”