Lando Norris launches junior team to help drivers reach F1

Lando Norris, the 2025 Formula 1 Drivers’ Champion, is launching a junior racing team, aimed at helping younger drivers join him on the grid.

LN4 Fusion, unveiled the week of the F1 Italian Grand Prix at the historic circuit in Monza, will debut next season in multiple junior racing categories. Rene Rosin, the founder and former boss of Prema, one of the most successful junior teams, will run LN 4 Fusion.

Along with the team itself, Norris is establishing the LN4 Legacy Programme, an “independent, fully funded driver development” program.

“I’ve been really lucky to have some amazing people around me throughout my career, and I know that getting to Formula 1 takes so much more than just talent,” Norris said as part of the launch.

“You need the right people around you, the right support and the right opportunities at the right time.”

Norris himself joined the McLaren Young Driver Programme back in 2017, before joining the F1 grid with McLaren in 2019. He described the dual programs as a means of building a team and environment where drivers can develop, while helping young drivers with opportunities previously unavilable to them.

“That’s what these two projects are all about. LN4 Fusion is about building a race team that can compete with the best in junior motorsport, with great people and a great environment for drivers to develop,” added Norris.

“The LN4 Legacy Programme is about helping talented young drivers get opportunities they might not otherwise have.”

The team will compete in the Italian F4 Championship, the FIA Formula Regional European Championship, and the FIA Formula 3 Championship next season. The aim is also to have a team in the FIA Formula 2 Championship next season, but that application process is ongoing. As part of the process LN4 Fusion has acquired selected assets from AIX Racing, including that team’s entry for the 2027 F3 season:

Julian Rouse, formerly Alpine F1’s Sporting Director, will lead the LN4 Legacy Programme. Rouse sat down with SB Nation at the 2024 United States Grand Prix, where he shared his insights on team development, including how racing teams are like hospitals:

“You know, if you put money into heart disease, it doesn’t benefit the cancer treatment area, but they’re all working towards the same thing to improve the metrics of that area, to work to the same budget.

“They have to collaborate, but they don’t always necessarily lead each other on a day-to-day basis. And then you’ve got so many small subparts in that.

“A big racing team, like in Formula One, is similar to that in that respect where you’ve got so many small subparts that are all working to the same end goal, but not necessarily always needing to be crossing paths,” described Rouse. “The marketing department and the aerodynamic department is a classic example of that where you’re working alongside each other all of the time, you’re trying to facilitate things to achieve the same goal, but not always necessarily on the same page.”

Now he, Norris, and an entire team, are going to help the future stars of motorsport.

“What we have created is far more than simply the acquisition of a racing team,” said Dan Hazelwood, who will head the Fusion Motorsport karting team.

“We have assembled a rare combination and secured the right sporting leadership in the industry: an established operation, a Formula 1 world champion, the most successful team principal in junior single-seater racing over the past two decades, world-class motorsport expertise, significant investment and a shared ambition to build a team capable of competing at the highest levels of the sport.”