Nice guys are the new alpha males – just look at Lando

Somewhere between the new Formula One world champion Lando Norris taking the chequered flag and realising what he'd just done, something quietly unprecedented happened: rather than leaping around and raving about his own brilliance, the 26-year-old – the supposed apex predator of a sport built on noise, danger, and an almost visceral appetite for risk - simply stayed in his car, helmet on, shoulders quivering, as if peeling off the visor would let the entire world see him cry.

- JACK BURKE

For years, people said Norris was too sweet. The conventional F1 champion is supposed to possess a kind of reptilian self-interest, a talent for detachment, the ability to climb out of a flaming wreckage, wipe the singed eyebrow from their forehead, and race again the next morning. Champions, historically, have sharp edges. Senna drove with a kind of volatile purity. Schumacher was weaponised efficiency personified. Even Lewis Hamilton – now the patron saint of cruelty-free self- actualisation, a man whose dog was vegan - had a ruthless, surgical streak in his dominant years.

Norris, by contrast, is nice. Polite, courteous, self-deprecating. He says thank you. He looks like he might get ID’d buying paracetamol. He talks openly about pressure. He's admitted to loneliness. He jokes about nerves. He doesn't pretend to be a psychopath in a carbon-fibre missile.

In 2025, this is what triumph looks like: earnest, quivering, overwhelmed. The kill-or-be-killed gladiatorial fantasy of masculinity has finally lost to a young man openly talking about his feelings. The soft boys have won.

Norris is the unlikely poster boy for a generation that has decided vulnerability is not a weakness but a form of swagger. He's the perfect sports star for a generation raised on therapy- speak and online transparency.