<figure id="attachment_3229680" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3229680" style="width: 1600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" class="wp-image-3229680 size-full" src="https://media.freemalaysiatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/213d5d43-afp__20251207__87cw64h__v2__midres__autoprixf1uaerace_cropped_1.webp" alt="" width="1600" height="1000" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-3229680" class="wp-caption-text">McLaren driver Lando Norris speaks after clinching the World Championship at the Abu Dhabi Formula One Grand Prix on Sunday. (AFP pic)</figcaption></figure>
ABU DHABI: Lando Norris has an idea for a painting, one that would capture everything he saw and felt in the final laps before he became Formula One world champion.
The 26-year-old McLaren driver would hang it on his wall as a permanent record of what can only be described as an out-of-body experience as he headed for the chequered flag at Abu Dhabi&#8217;s Yas Marina circuit on Sunday.
Speaking to reporters in a hotel room a day after the most momentous event of his life, Norris related how memories and sensations, and thoughts of family and friends, had played out like &#8220;the montage of my life&#8221; in his head.
The last two laps before crossing the line in third place, all he needed to secure the title, were the best memory of all.
&#8220;I really want to get someone to do a painting of me. I need to find an artist but from my view,&#8221; the Briton said.
&#8220;My eyes, coming around, with the visor and the bumps and everything, seeing all the papayas (McLaren colours) and just seeing the chequered flag, and that moment of coming around the last corner, lifting off and then I can have both my gloves here (in front of his face) because I started to cry&#8230;
&#8220;I want to save that moment. Because that was really the &#8216;it&#8217; moment.&#8221;
Like the last moments of a life
McLaren&#8217;s late Brazilian triple-champion Ayrton Senna once described a 1988 lap of Monaco in similar terms of wonderment &#8212; relating how he felt he was no longer driving the car consciously but in another realm.
Norris would not put himself in such a league but what he described carried echoes of the past.
Three laps from the end he had wondered how it would hit him to be champion, and he feared he might not feel anything.
And then it happened, a highlights reel in the mind.
&#8220;It&#8217;s like a movie, when you get those flashbacks at the end and you see that style of last moments of someone. It&#8217;s not the last moments for me but it was like that,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;I was watching me &#8230; just being able to watch me and watch me drive around but all within the space of a couple of minutes.
&#8220;I&#8217;m watching from above. (Like) God. I&#8217;m just watching from a bird&#8217;s-eye, helicopter view.&#8221;
Norris, who won in Monaco this year, recalled childhood karting and video games with his father Adam. He imagined his mother, Cisca, watching in the garage and the tears welled up.
He revealed that before the weekend he had looked up videos of how other champions &#8211; compatriot Lewis Hamilton who has been there seven times and Sebastian Vettel a four-times winner of the prized trophy &#8211; had celebrated their successes.
In the end he did it his way, without copying anything.

MatchPoint Times

Like a movie in the mind: Norris paints a picture of title-winning moment

Lando Norris details what went through his mind over last laps, it was like watching himself from above.

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