‘Hurting’ Lando Norris braced for engine penalty blows in title defence

Lando Norris’s bid to defend his world title has suffered another setback, with the McLaren driver admitting engine penalties are now likely after a run of reliability problems.

The Briton suffered a torrid weekend last time out in Monaco, where he suffered not one, but two, technical issues.

Lando Norris could take F1 grid penalties after McLaren issues

Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust

Norris came to a halt on the track during Friday’s FP2 with an apparent electrical issue. McLaren broke curfew that night to replace the wiring harness and change the ESME pack in his MCL40.

His weekend, though, went from bad to worse when he was forced to retire from the Grand Prix.

The reigning world champion slowed midway through the 78-lap race and had to park his McLaren in the pit lane, revealing his power unit “completely went”.

Norris arrived in Monaco with a new power unit ancillary component, his fourth of the championship, and moved onto a second MGU-K during the weekend.

It meant that even before Sunday’s DNF, he was closing in on penalties. Norris was on his second ICE, second turbocharger, second exhaust, second MGU-K, second energy store, third control electronics and third power unit ancillary component.

Norris’ next MGU-K and energy store will mean a grid penalty for the Briton.

“I have no idea about the future,” he told PlanetF1.com and other media about the prospect of power unit penalties.

“I’m towards the end of some of my allocations, but look, I can’t do anything about that now.

“As a team, we can’t really do anything about that. We can re-maximise what we have.

“I’m sure at some point I’ll start running into having to take penalties and take parts that ideally I wouldn’t be having to, but that’s just the situation we’re in.”

The Briton revealed the team understands what went wrong in Monaco, although didn’t share any details as to the exact cause.

“They explained it, they know what the problem was,” he said. “I’m sure they’ve got fixes and things.

“But you know a lot of our issues have all been quite different at every point.

“When you go back to Montreal, whether you look at FP2 in Monaco, now the race last weekend, a lot of the issues are all quite different ones.

“They’re not always the same and repetitive things, so it’s kind of once you fix one thing, something else doesn’t go right.

“But everyone’s doing the best they can, so we just have to keep working.”

F1 2026: The season’s winners and losers

The results of the F1 2026 championship

The F1 2026 Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings

Norris hurting over ‘pretty impossible’ F1 title defence

Norris has yet to win a Grand Prix this season, although he finished first in the Miami Sprint before finishing the Grand Prix in second place behind the dominant Kimi Antonelli.

He trails the Italian by 58 points to 156, but insists he’s not giving up on the prospect of retaining the world title.

“I think I’m dealing [with it] okay, to be honest,” he said.

“It hurts, of course, because I know I’m not still fighting for wins, and we’re not fighting for podiums and things like that at the moment.

“But I was still optimistic at the very early part of the season, if we started not so strong, that the season is long and we can come from a points deficit through the middle of the year to the end of the year, and hopefully finish strong and be able to fight.

“But when you keep having not even an amazing weekend, but when you have things that keep going wrong, you cannot build confidence in the car, you cannot try things.

“All of this is making any title defence pretty impossible for the time being. So, it hurts me, but it also hurts the whole team.

“None of us wants to not finish races. We all want to give ourselves another chance to defend the constructors’ and to defend the drivers’, but for the time being, it’s just impossible.

“So, we just have to keep working hard. It hurts, but that’s just racing sometimes.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.

You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!

Read next: Piastri says FIA ‘can’t change’ Monaco GP result after Alpine won Right of Review petition