Jenson Button voices ‘surprise’ at Lando Norris signing long-term McLaren contract

Former F1 star Jenson Button admitted his surprise over Lando Norris’ decision to sign a new long-term deal with McLaren.

The Brit put pen to paper on a multi-year contract extension with his current team in February 2022, with the deal taking him through to the end of the 2025 season.

The 23-year-old impressed again during a tough 2022 for McLaren, finishing seventh in the drivers standings and was the only non-Red Bull, Ferrari or Mercedes driver to secure a podium finish.

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However McLaren only managed a fifth place finish in the constructors standings and were considerable way off contending for race wins let alone the championship. The last F1 victory for McLaren came courtesy of Daniel Ricciardo at Monza in 2021, which marked the team’s first since Button took the chequered flag for the team at Interlagos in 2012.

Given the need to be in a competitive car to fight for the title, the 2009 world champion was shocked by the length of Norris’ new deal. “I was surprised when he signed a long-term deal,” Button said on Sky Sports. 

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“Because in this sport, you don’t know who’s at the front and you need to be in a winning car. Your talent is not enough to bring a car to the front. You know, you can help them develop, but you need to be in a competitive car that can win races and McLaren haven’t given them that.

“They’re doing well, but at this point in his career, he needs to be in a winning car. So see what happens over the next couple of years, I really do hope that teams like McLaren, Alpine and Aston Martin will be closer to the top three and even challenging. That was the whole idea with the budget cap, and also the wind tunnel time that the top teams get a lot less when they perform well in a season for the next year.”

Norris will have a new teammate in the form of Oscar Piastri, who took the seat of Ricciardo after the eight-time F1 race winner’s contract was terminated. Boss Zak Brown and co are certainly looking to the future and Button believes fruits of the labour put in now will be on show over the next year or two.

“So hopefully we’re going to start seeing benefits from that in ‘23, ‘24 I think we’ll see it even more so,” he added. “He’s got a lot of time on his hands. He’s still young Lando, very quick, new team-mate in [Oscar] Piastri, who again is very talented.

“[It] puts a lot of pressure on both of them, you know, with Piastri coming into Formula 1 and jumping straight in a relatively competitive car.” Norris meanwhile, predicted that the upcoming season will see a ‘shake-up’ of teams on the grid and hopes it will benefit McLaren.

Appearing on ITV’s This Morning on Thursday, he said: “Hopefully, [there will be] closer racing than we had last year. Always when there’s a new rule change like we had, it takes a bit of time for every team to get back into it and understand the cars as well as what we will have this season.

“Hopefully, we’re a bit closer to the front. Hopefully, everyone is closer to each other, which will make the racing closer and make it better and more exciting for everyone to watch. You might see a shake-up of different teams in different positions. Hopefully, that’s us being a little bit further up and racing different cars and so forth. Closer season, more exciting, more racing, and I look forward to it.”

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