McLaren has signed 17-year-old British sensation Lando Norris to its young driver programme to replace Stoffel Vandoorne.
Norris has enjoyed a phenomenal rise through the junior ranks, becoming the youngest karting world champion before winning the British Formula 4 title in 2015 and dominating 2016's Toyota Racing Championship. He also dominated the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 and Formula Renault 2.0 NEC, enough to earn the prestigious McLaren Autosport BRDC Award in 2016, previously won by the likes of Dario Franchitti and Jenson Button. The Briton will contest this year's European Formula 3 series with Carlin.
With former young driver Vandoorne stepping up to the senior team this year, McLaren announced its new roster on Wednesday, with executive director Zak Brown welcoming Norris alongside Nick de Vries and Nobuharu Matsushita.
"I regard Lando as a fabulous prospect," Brown said. "He blew the doors off his rivals in not one but three highly competitive race series last year, then capped that by establishing himself as the clear winner of the McLaren Autosport BRDC Award.
"It was an impressively mature performance, and we'll be developing him this year as part of our simulator team, whereby he'll be contributing directly and importantly to our Formula 1 campaign at the same time as honing and improving his technical feedback capabilities."
McLaren has a proud history of promoting young drivers through the ranks of F1, with three-time world champion Lewis Hamilton the team's most famous protégé. Racing director Eric Boullier says the young driver programme continues to go from strength to strength.
"I'm very excited by how fruitful the McLaren-Honda young driver programme has been in bringing talented young drivers to the fore. It's a grand testament to the success of our programme that first Kevin [Magnussen] and now Stoffel [Vandoorne] have succeeded in their ambitions to become grand prix drivers. And, although the programme is a relatively recent creation, in truth we've been nurturing and developing the careers of up-and-coming drivers for many decades."
Matsushita is set for another season of GP2 with the ART team. The press release said Dutchman De Vries is in the process of determining where he will be racing in 2017 and also confirmed Oliver Turvey remains with the team as test and development driver.