Why is Lando Norris the most hated man in F1?

You’d be forgiven for thinking that pantomime season had started early at the Mexican GP, with the crowd booing and jeering as if Lando Norris had donned a Captain Hook costume and threatened to throw Peter Pan to the crocodiles.

Partisan crowds are nothing new in Formula 1 and most tracks have their preferred drivers - Silverstone and Lewis Hamilton, Zandvoort and Max Verstappen - where naturally their rivals become the 'villain of the week’.

For F1 ingénue Lando Norris however, being the target of a discontented crowd is a fairly new sensation, and clearly came as a shock to the driver and pundits alike when he was booed after his dominant win in Mexico.

So, what’s Mexico’s proverbial beef with Norris? Is their booing a reflection of a wider sentiment against the British driver? Or is it a localised storm, whipped up in the frenzy of one of F1’s most spirited races?

Why was Norris booed at Mexican GP?

Norris' unpopularity in Mexico was made clear ahead of the race weekend. In one fan event, the crowd erupted into cheers at the mention of Oscar Piastri, and boos when his team-mate's name was uttered.

A dominant weekend, worsened by his reclamation of the championship lead, will have likely irked those who had already taken a dislike to Norris. But, why were they so against the driver in the first place?

Carlos Jalife, a journalist for Mexican publication Fast Mag, explained the booing to Norris in the post-race press conference, and suggested their displeasure harked back to the Italian GP in September.

At Monza, a slow pit stop for Norris saw him lose second place to team-mate Piastri, with the Aussie then instructed to give the position back, despite the error being entirely the team’s.

Piastri complied, and since then has been a shadow of his former self, and you start to wonder whether these team orders - and subsequent claims of favouritism towards Norris - have put the 24-year-old at a psychological disadvantage.

McLaren’s decision to swap the two drivers was indeed odd. Fair enough, if the pair had been racing wheel-to-wheel, but the slow pit stop was a team issue, not Piastri’s. It seemed unfair that the Aussie was made to pay for a mistake which had nothing to do with him.

Another fanbase equally as passionate as Mexican fans - the tifosi - also booed Norris at the Italian GP following McLaren's team orders fiasco.

It's likely the crowd in Mexico shared this disdain for, what they consider, an unsporting decision-making process in Lando's favour. F1 fans like a championship to be decided on track, in a fair and sporting manner, not with vague ‘papaya rules’ which are unclear to the public and instead conjure vignettes of duplicitous machinations behind closed doors.

Perez's hero status

The Red Bull contingent were also represented with vigour in Mexico, the brand’s presence incubating over the years when home hero Sergio Perez competed for the team.

By osmosis, the Mexican fanbase’s cult of personality around Perez has likely extended to the Red Bull team themselves, with increased support for Max Verstappen this weekend.

Perhaps Verstappen’s return to the title fight - now 36 points behind Norris - set expectations high, with the crowd hoping for another masterclass from the Dutchman. When they were deprived of a battle for the win, and Norris instead won by 30 seconds, fans may have been left deflated amid the championship hype.

The dislike towards Norris could also simply be a matter of personality. As with any situation in life, some traits are admired by others, some put us off an individual entirely. It wouldn’t do for us all to like the same things.

What is most shocking is the volume and passion with which the crowd made themselves heard through their boos, rather than the actual dislike itself.

This could have been down to the nature of the venue, the arena like Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez encasing and amplifying the heckling crowd like a Roman amphitheatre.

The booing perhaps was less about hating Lando Norris, and more about the collective catharsis of expressing a negative emotion in a large group.

After all, isn't that what sport has always facilitated? F1 is first and foremost, a performance. The latest iteration of popular entertainment that has spanned throughout human history, from the gladiators to Shakespeare.

Entertainment and sport allows ordinary people to forget their daily troubles and exhume feelings they are prohibited from expressing in ordinary circumstances. The boos in Mexico were less about Norris, and more about the very human need to be heard.

Yes, Lando Norris emerged as the people’s villain in Mexico. In Brazil, he could become their hero. Such is the fickle nature of public perception.

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