There are undoubtedly a lot of perks to being a , but I think my personal favorite has to be that they seem to just get free rein of manufacturer factories. If I had a chance to, say, wander around the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, England, I don’t think they’d ever be able to drag me out of it. And in that sense, I am just like McLaren F1 driver .
Norris might just be one of the most personable drivers on an F1 grid for quite a while. The sport has gotten pretty sanitized, full of PR-friendly answers to interview questions and a tight grip on anything fun. But Norris is out here battling with fellow F1 driver Max Verstappen on , chirping other drivers, , showing up to MotoGP as , and, uh, .
But I think the best thing has been watching Norris stream his explorations of the McLaren Technology Centre. You know what I would do if I was faced with the McLaren F1 GTR Long Tail? I would get behind the wheel and start pushing buttons and flipping switches, just for the hell of it.
And that is exactly what Norris does:
You can check out more of his videos on Norris’s channel. There’s a ton of behind-the-scenes stuff at the McLaren shop, along with iRacing streams and the occasional “stuck in a traffic jam” broadcast.
I hesitate to call Norris “relatable” because it’s kind of impossible to relate to anyone who makes millions of dollars to travel around the world driving cars, but I gotta say—this is about as close to “relatable” as we’re going to get.
And it is pretty great. When’s the last time a race car driver gave fans an impromptu tour of a manufacturing facility? If we get one of these tours, it’s probably a well-coordinated and carefully designed effort by the team itself that only shows off the shiny exterior. With Norris, we get to see all the good stuff: the inside of classic cars, pre-event snacks, and more.
Honestly, this is a damn good time to be an F1 fan.