F1 2025: Lando Norris advice offered by Nico Rosberg as he installs McLaren driver as title favourite

Nico Rosberg believes Lando Norris is the early favourite for the F1 world championship in 2025 but has offered the McLaren driver advice on how he should approach this winter and a title challenge next year.

The 25-year-old Norris enjoyed his best season in 2024, winning the first four grands prix of his career and finishing as runner-up to Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship with his results helping McLaren win the constructors’ title for the first time in 26 years.

With Norris having already vowed to come back stronger to try and dethrone Verstappen next year, Sky Sports F1 pundit Rosberg has installed him as the driver to beat – although warned that the Briton needed to make fewer mistakes.

“He has shown raw speed on a level I would say even with a Max Verstappen. So the raw speed is there, it’s very, very phenomenal and it’s world champion-like,” the 2016 world champion told the Sky Sports F1 Podcast.

“Where we’ve still seen a little bit of issues for him is he has some inner demons in his mind which result in the one or two mistakes. The most notable was Singapore where he was leading the race by 20 seconds and two times he almost crashed out to the extent that it was even a bit strange that it was so extreme

“So he has to work on that a little bit still to just reduce the one or two mistakes, which is an area where [McLaren team-mate] Oscar Piastri is stronger. Piastri is not as fast in his peak speed but is always consistent, always there, no mistakes.

“But Lando is the favourite for next year now to win the championship.”

Justifying his pick, Rosberg added: “Why not? There is no reason why he shouldn’t be the favourite because the end of this year McLaren was the strongest car, he has been marginally stronger than Piastri within the team, so he should be the favourite.

“Verstappen doesn’t have the fastest car. He won two races since May – that’s nuts – of which one was just Verstappen magic in the rain.

“So only one race in the dry he’s won since May. You’re not going to win the world championship in that form next year against a Lando Norris. So I would say Lando is the favourite.”

Rosberg’s three pieces of advice for Norris

Rosberg won his F1 title in 2016 after two years of finishing second to team-mate Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes.

Using that experience, the German suggested three ways in which Norris should approach 2025.

Urging the McLaren driver to take the season “race by race” rather than thinking too far ahead, Rosberg said: “Do not make the mistake and start building yourself towards ‘I am the favourite, everything else but winning is going to be a failure’.

“On the one hand we love to see it as spectators, but for him it’s probably not the best path.

“Like in Abu Dhabi on the cool-down lap he said in the car ‘next year is my year’ and that’s something that I would actually recommend him not to do because it’s just an unnecessary pressure, expectation dynamic that you kick off.

“If you want, do it internally or whatever, but especially not externally – that was one of the keys to me winning my world championship, actually.”

And for his next piece of advice heading into the final year of the F1’s present rules era, Rosberg said: “The second one would be, prepare the hell out of it. Prepare like crazy!

“You never know in F1 when the next opportunity comes to be world champion. You really never know because it depends so much on your team and we know the regulations are changing in ’26 in the biggest way they have perhaps ever changed in Formula 1, it’s just crazy.

“So literally the team that’s first [in 2025] could be last the year after if you just get it completely wrong. It’s just going to change so much.

“So you just never know when your next chance comes to be world champion and therefore prepare the hell out of it, every single detail. Whether it’s physical, mental – take a mental coach, psychologist, I did as well. Everything.

“Keep driving during the winter, keep go-karting, keep your skills active. Everything possible.”

Lastly, Rosberg said Norris needed to study his chief rival in order to find a way to prevail against Verstappen in close combat more often.

“He needs to analyse every single wheel-to-wheel battle that Max Verstappen has been in throughout the whole last three years. Every single one,” he added.

“The team needs to prepare the snippets of videos and he needs to study them. Study them, study them and study them to understand what he could do better tactically to beat Max in those situations.”

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