Lando Norris will race with #1 in F1 2026 as reigning champion

The honour of racing with number one on the car is reserved for the reigning F1 world champion

Newly crowned Formula 1 world champion Lando Norris has announced he will race with the number one on his McLaren car in the 2026 campaign.

The 26-year-old claimed a maiden title on Sunday by finishing third at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, meaning he ended Max Verstappen’s run of four, consecutive championships.

It means Norris has now received the option of racing with the #1 next year, as that honour is reserved for the reigning champion so Verstappen has used it since 2022.

The champion does have the option of sticking with the number they had before though, as Lewis Hamilton did with #44, but the McLaren driver has opted against continuing with #4 next year.

“It’s tradition,” Norris, who raced with #4 since his F1 debut in 2019, told Sky Sports. “It’s there for a reason. It’s there because you can go and try grab it and you can work hard to try and get it.

“All of us as a team that gets to have a role in McLaren, or my car, will get to wear that with pride. It’s all my mechanics, my engineers, everyone that’s part of McLaren gets to have that acknowledgement too.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Erik Junius

“So it’s not for me, it’s for them as well. It’s their pride, knowing that they put a lot of work and effort into everything that they can also go ‘we’re number one’.

“It’s not as cool when you say ‘we are number four’, so they will be even happier than I am.”

Verstappen will therefore race with a different number in the 2026 campaign after finishing runner-up to Norris this year, but the Dutchman doesn’t know which one he’ll use yet.

The simple answer could be to return to #33, which he used from 2015 to 2021, but he didn’t choose that number because it was his preference. Instead, he would have chosen #3 but it was already taken up by Daniel Ricciardo.

“I will look at it over the winter,” said Verstappen at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. “But my favourite number is three. We just need to see whether that is actually possible.”

The only hurdle in using #3 is that a driver must have been out of F1 for at least two seasons before somebody else can take the number that they used. For Ricciardo, that isn’t the case as he left in 2024, meaning Verstappen would need to seek permission.

So it all depends on that, but at the Abu Dhabi finale Verstappen was asked by DAZN which number he’ll use next year and he simply said “probably not 33, I’m still thinking about it”.