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Lando Norris says Escape From Tarkov “took days off my life”

Formula 1 driver Lando Norris admits that he pulled 36-hour Escape From Tarkov sessions during the height of the pandemic - and he "loved it"

Escape From Tarkov Lando Norris: F1 driver Lando Norris talking on a podcast wearing an orange McLaren fleece

It’s no secret that F1 star Lando Norris loves to game, but the McLaren driver has recently revealed just how addicted he was to one of the most hardcore FPS games out there, Escape From Tarkov.

Norris is a Formula 1 favourite among gamers, following the racing driver’s stint as a Twitch streamer during the pandemic and the formation of his own esports and content organisation, Quadrant. He’s expressed his own love for videogames – particularly shooters like Call of Duty, Halo, and PUBG, and sim racing – plenty of times in the past, but on the latest episode of The OpTic Podcast, Norris revealed just how hooked he got on one of his all-time favourite games.

OpTic Texas’ Call of Duty League star Seth ‘Scump’ Abner asks how long he spends gaming on his days off from Formula 1 duties, and while he admits it’s a lot less now than it used to be, he confesses to have pulled roughly 36-hour sessions playing Escape From Tarkov.

“[Escape From Tarkov] took days off my life,” Norris says. “I could go probably 10am in the morning, and I’d go to like 12pm the next day – or even more, I’d go to like bedtime the next day.”

The F1 star says that he wouldn’t often need much to keep him awake either as he would find himself “so into it” and “focused”, and says that he “loved” sweating it out on the tactical extraction shooter.

Norris implies that this was taking place during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is when the 2020 Formula 1 season was suspended for around four months due to the outbreak of the virus.

With Norris being such a Tarkov superfan, we wonder if he can crack the code of this mysterious ARG that Battlestate Games is playing with fans of its game.