Lando Norris has spoken about the mental health problems he endured during his debut season in Formula One back in 2019.
The Bristol-born driver has excelled since his introduction to the sport and came agonisingly close to a first career victory last time out in Russia before late rain and bad decisions ended his chances, with Lewis Hamilton going on to claim a 100th career victory.
Debuting in 2019 as a 19-year-old, Norris quickly became a hit showing speed on the track and a fun-loving personality off it and finished 11th in the standings in his first campaign.
While he showed signs of promise in his first outings, and has since improved significantly, the 21-year-old has admitted he suffered with self-doubt and depression during his first year.
"I guess people, when you just watch TV, don't realise many things that a driver goes through," he said on ITV's This Morning.
"It's a bit of a shame but there's more programmes now where you get to see what the driver is like behind the scenes, and the amount of pressure and stress that they have to cope with.
"Especially at my age, coming into Formula 1 at 19, there's a lot of eyes of you. So dealing with all these kind of things, that took its toll on me.
"[I was] feeling like, I don't know what's next, if this goes wrong, if I don't go out in the next session and perform, what's the outcome of all of this?
"Am I going to be in Formula 1 next year? If I'm not, what am I going to do? Because I'm not really good at many other things in life.
"So just all of that, and then feeling a depressed a lot of time that if I have a bad weekend I just think, I'm not good enough and things like that. When they start adding up over a season, and the social media side of it all, that can just really start to hurt you."
