Lando Norris celebrates F1 title with all-night party and a Sausage McMuffin

Lando Norris said he celebrated winning his first Formula One world championship until six in the morning and ended his historic night with a McDonald’s.

Norris marked becoming just the 11th driver from Britain to win an F1 title at a glitzy afterparty at the W Hotel which sits on top of the Yas Marina Circuit, where only hours earlier he realised his childhood dream.

Videos emerged of the 26-year-old toasting his success by singing Queen’s ‘We are the Champions’ and Neil Diamond’s ‘Sweet Caroline’, surrounded by his friends and family.

Asked what time he left the party, Norris replied: “6am, and then a little McDonald’s. I really wanted some Chicken McNuggets but it was the morning by then so they didn’t have any left.

“I had a Sausage McMuffin. Was it the breakfast of champions? Certainly not. I regretted it straightaway.”

Norris held his nerve at the season-finale by finishing third in Abu Dhabi to end Max Verstappen’s run of four consecutive world championships. Verstappen finished just two points behind Norris after a marathon 24-round campaign.

Norris then revealed the final moments of Sunday’s 58-lap race were like a montage of his life.

“It was like a movie,” he said. “As much as I was just trying to avoid every bump possible, I was also remembering all of those moments, from the very beginning, driving a go-kart for the first time ever, my first time on the track in a go-kart, the races I had, the karting world championship I won in 2014, and many different memories.

“I was watching me, I was living it, but I was also watching me drive around from a bird’s-eye view – and this was all within the space of a couple of minutes – through to the last seven years of McLaren and the good and bad moments of this season.

“I had no idea what to expect. And with three laps to go, I was like, ‘I am getting pretty close, and I am not feeling anything yet’. I was like, ‘Is this going to mean a lot to me?’.

“Then the next lap, I started having these cool flashbacks. It was like a montage of my life, and going under the bridge for the final time, and imagining my mum in the garage, and that made me a bit emotional.

“But the best memory was when I came round the final corner, and this is now from my view, my eyes inside my visor, coming round, and seeing the chequered flag, and that moment of lifting off and being able to cry. I want to saviour that moment because that was the ‘it’ moment.

“I don’t get emotional like that over anything and before the weekend I was like, ‘Do I need to look up a video as to how celebrate a world championship?’.

“I was going to look back at how Sebastian (Vettel) did it because he was a good one for celebrating, and Lewis (Hamilton), too. I didn’t in the end. And what played out was what I felt and that was all in the moment and that made it extra special.”

Norris, who will return to his McLaren for a Pirelli tyre test in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday, insisted his first title will not change him as a person.

He concluded: “From the exterior it will change my life, but it won’t change me, and how I live it. I really hope it doesn’t anyway. I don’t want to be that kind of person.

“It is cool that people will now say I am a world champion, and my name is on an incredible list of other drivers, but it won’t change who I am and that is the most important thing.”