For Nico Rosberg, Lando Norris is the favorite for the 2025 World Cup title – but he warns the Briton not to put too much pressure on himself before the new season
“Next year will be my year,” Lando Norris radioed after his victory at the 2024 Formula 1 season finale in Abu Dhabi. The Briton won the constructors’ title with McLaren last year and would also like to become driver world champion for the first time in his career in 2025.
“Of course, as spectators, we love this,” says expert Nico Rosberg in Sky’s Formula 1 podcast about Norris’s challenge. However, he also believes that last year’s runner-up has done himself no favors by doing so.
He would have advised Norris against making such a public statement, “because it creates an unnecessary dynamic of pressure and expectation,” says Rosberg from his own experience. “Internally,” said the 2016 world champion, you could of course say something like that.
But in public, he would advise Norris to be a little more reserved. “That was a key factor for me when I won my world championship title,” Rosberg looks back and explains that his advice “especially” applies to Norris, who is “mentally” not the strongest driver.
Rosberg: Norris should think from race to race
“I had that profile too,” Rosberg admits. He often had “doubts” before his title win in 2016 and never saw the glass half empty. “I therefore strongly recommend that he take it [2025] race by race,” says Rosberg.
Norris shouldn’t think or talk about the world title, but just try to win one race at a time. Because if you position yourself in public as the favorite for the world championship, then that “brings a lot of pressure with it,” warns Rosberg.
“And you want to avoid that as much as possible,” emphasizes the current expert. The second piece of advice he gives Norris in the same podcast for the 2025 season is to prepare. He should work on “every single detail” during the winter.
This applies to both physical and mental fitness. “Get a mental trainer, a psychologist, that’s what I did,” Rosberg gives as an example. In addition, it is important to continue training in the winter and, for example, to do a lot of karting.
Duels against Verstappen as another weak point
In addition, Norris should use the time to analyze his weaknesses from the 2024 season. The Briton himself has already admitted that he lost out too often in direct duels with Max Verstappen last year. Rosberg also advises him to work on this.
“It’s so hard to be friends in such a situation – especially with a rival like Max Verstappen, who is a master at exploiting the gray areas,” explains Rosberg, reminding us that Norris lost almost every duel against his friend on the track in 2024.
“He has to analyze every single wheel-to-wheel duel Max Verstappen has been involved in for the last three years,” says Rosberg, adding: “The team has to put together a video and he has to learn what he can do tactically better so that he can beat Max in these situations.”
Although Norris still has some work ahead of him according to Rosberg, he still considers the Briton the favorite for the World Championship title in 2025. He points out that world champion Verstappen only won two races in the second half of the 2024 season.
“You can’t win the world championship against Lando Norris next year in this form,” says Rosberg.