Behind almost every high-achieving sportsperson, there’s a supportive – and in some cases extremely wealthy – family backing them all the way.
Such is the case with new Formula One champion, Lando Norris, who has combined his great talent and work ethic with incredible privilege.
After his tense triumph in Abu Dhabi at the weekend in which the Brit’s third-place finish was enough to secure a maiden F1 championship, it was his family who the emotional 26-year-old sought out and thanked on the team radio.
His father, Adam, 56, was front and centre, even embarrassing his son with some dodgy dancing at the after party.
Adam Norris has been integral to his son’s success and has a fortune estimated to be in the region of £200million.
In 2022 he was ranked 610th on the Sunday Times Rich List and had retired by the time he was 36 after making his millions in pensions.
Adam set up pensions company Pensions Direct in 1998 and a year later was bought out by Hargreaves Lansdown, helping to build that company up.
Hargreaves Lansdown went on to become Britain’s largest direct-to-consumer pension retailer and went public in 2008, allowing him to cash in.
The money he made allowed him to support his high-achieving family.
Adam and Belgian wife, Cisca have four children together, Lando, Oliver, Cisca and Flo.
Flo, 23, is an international showjumper and competes in a variety of equestrian disciplines at a very high level.
They were all present at Lando’s brilliant title win on Sunday along with the driver’s supermodel girlfriend Margarida Corceiro.
The karting world is the precarious and inordinately expensive pathway into Formula One and Adam’s wealth enabled him to support both Lando and his brother in.
‘He (Adam) always had the dream of getting into motorsport himself but never had the opportunity,’ Oliver said in a recent interview with the YouTuber Lucas Stewart.
‘We had no background in it. So he bought us this motorbike for the field, and he would sort of go out and mow a nice little circuit for us and we would go out and drive around there.
‘Then I think he thought “How can we take this further?” And I think for my brother’s seventh or eighth birthday he bought this little go-kart.
‘I just wasn’t at the front winning,’ he explained, simply, of why he stopped. ‘I was competing against [Lando] and he was younger than me, and winning.
‘Every time he would jump up and into a new category at the youngest possible age and he was up there fighting for the championship at the earliest possible moment. [But] I had a good run. Had lots of fun.’
Adam previously spoke about the time and effort that went into those early days, telling Sky Sports: ‘A lot of travelling around the world to go-kart tracks, it was an amazing journey, really good fun, went to weird and wonderful places at odd times and just relentless every weekend.
‘But having fun, a lot of fun, really loved the journey and loved the destination and where we are now.
‘A lot of hard work, we probably did more than most of the other people around, and he loved it more than everyone else so it was never painful, but it was hard.’
And Adam, who says he has been to more than 400 races around the world with his son, also attracted criticism for barbed comments about those karting days in the wake of Lando’s triumph.
‘You’d go to remote little tracks and places no tourists would go to and I really enjoyed every part of that journey but it was hard.
‘You all know that some of the other parents packed up because they didn’t want to do that but I was there and the team was there the whole way through to keep going.’
Some thought this was a thinly-veiled dig at Max Verstappen’s parents who opted not to be in Abu Dhabi for the season finale, while others pointed to the lack of self-awareness, saying other parents ‘packed up’ because the financial strain – not felt by multi-millionaire Adam – became too much.
Aside from the financial backing, Adam helped instil a competitive ferocity in his children from a young age.
In an interview with Telegraph Magazine, Lando previously said: ‘I used to love driving the mower.
‘It was a proper sit-on one. But I was so small when I was a kid – 30kg when I was 10 – I had to drag some of my dad’s dumbbells from some old gym equipment he had, and put them on the mower, because the mower wouldn’t start unless there was 50kg on top.
‘I used to go out after school and just drive the mower, and cut everything and perfect the garden!’
Even though Adam retired from full-time work when he sold his pensions business, he has still kept irons in the fire in terms of entrepreneurship.
He has invested in dozens of businesses, perhaps the most famous of which is Pure Electric, an e-scooter company founded in 2018.
Adam and Cisca brought up their children in Somerset, while Lando himself now resides in Monaco, like many other drivers on the F1 grid.
Adam and the Norris’ are a regular feature in the paddock and known by Norris’ peers.
His mother was in tears when she embraced her title-winning son in the middle-east on Sunday and Lando also overflowed with emotion in the car after crossing the finish line.
Asked to sum up his emotions, Norris senior said: ‘Relief, probably. It’s been a long time and a difficult season, and in the middle when we dipped below.
‘But it’s a long journey, it’s a difficult journey. There’s a lot of pain involved in getting there – painful days and long days and sacrifices, and now we’re there. Champion of the world, it’s cool.’
He also revealed he watched the race in a room on his own without commentary in a bid to calm himself down.
He went on: ‘It was actually really good. For the first time all year, I locked myself in a room, I watched it without commentary, and I just sat there with the headphones on and very quietly watched the whole thing.
‘The commentary gets you excited, so when I’m at home I get really excited! My heart rate’s going through the roof, so my thing was, “Can I listen to some classical music?”. And you know, if he’d had a puncture he wouldn’t have got there.’
His mother continued to Sky Sports: ‘When Lando was seven, he started karting; by the time he was eight he was competing together with his brother Ollie, and it took the two boys one direction and the two girls I have the other direction,’ she reflected.
‘So I missed Lando and Ollie, seeing them growing up as kids. Suddenly playing with a tractor naked in the garden was done, and I missed that! But this is amazing, this is fantastic.’
