What’s going on with Lando Norris? McLaren lifts lid on F1 2026 transformation

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has explained why Lando Norris’ confidence levels have never been higher than they are now – and detailed how the world champion has achieved it.

Norris has been a driver open about his own self-doubts in the past, but in racing to victory in Hungary last week, the British driver revealed a new level of confidence about his pace and ability to defeat Oscar Piastri.

Andrea Stella explains Lando Norris confidence boost

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Norris took pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest last weekend, but lost out on the first lap to a decisive overtake from McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri.

But Norris wasn’t to be put off, and hounded his teammate relentlessly throughout the first half of the race before taking the lead when the Australian was baulked by a lapped Carlos Sainz in what was a costly incident for Piastri’s strategy choice.

Once free into the lead, Norris streaked away, while Piastri retired due to a gearbox failure shortly after.

The reigning world champion thus took his first grand prix win of the year, following on from his first pole position with the number one on his car.

Speaking afterwards, Norris revealed the full extent of his confidence in a victory, speaking about how he had known he had a pace advantage over Piastri from following his teammate.

“The pace advantage I had was huge today. But I don’t know why,” he told PlanetF1.com and other media outlets.

“The cars are identical and I’ve just been feeling very strong lately. I’ve worked on many areas from last year.

“I feel much more confident lately with how to extract performance, and I’ve worked a lot with my engineers to understand this car because it’s certainly not an easy car to understand and figure out how to drive on the limit consistently.

“I was convinced I could win the race today and we did. We were just on another level today and I felt in a very good flow of things.

“When the car’s good and when I’m in a good flow, there’s no stopping.”

This is a markedly different attitude from some of his past declarations, in which he has publicly berated himself for mistakes or decisions on track.

He’s also previously revealed just how much he has doubted his own abilities, lacking in confidence against the likes of the unshakeable Max Verstappen, and that the question of whether he was truly good enough to be a world champion was one he had to ask himself throughout 2025.

But Norris did prove it in ’25, coming out on top of the battle with Piastri after the Australian enjoyed a much stronger first half of the year, and holding off a resurgent Verstappen in the process.

With Hungary suggesting that Norris’ new self-belief has unlocked a new level within himself in his title defence year, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said it’s evident to see where his driver has made leaps and bounds compared to 2025.

“I think Lando kept a trajectory going, a trajectory that he started last year after the first third of the season, in which he had experienced some very competitive weekends and some weekends in which he was struggling to extract the most from the car, or he might have struggled to capitalise on the performance in Q3,” he said.

“You may remember a couple of events in which this happened and also you may remember he was talking about not getting enough feedback from the car.

“There were highs and lows. There were some difficulties. There were clear learning points to review and learn from, and he embraced the challenge of doing so.

“So he worked on himself, first as a person. The group of engineers around him, all the entourage, was a great work of development from a personal and a driving point of view. So I think what we see here is just the continuation of this trajectory.

“I think that was an important point for Lando himself, and for the team working with Lando, to understand in which area we needed to improve to offer a car that Lando could trust, could drive without having to think too much, but, at the same time, it was also an opportunity to reflect on mindset, approach to racing, expectation, and emotional control.

“So I think it was an improvement in a very organic and holistic way for the driver and for the team around the driver, and the driver just kept this trajectory.

“He’s driving better this year because he was driving better at the end of the season last year compared to mid-season, and mid-season compared to the first third of the season.

“It’s just a trajectory that, as a professional athlete or a driver, you just have to keep going all the time, and this is not only for the driver, but also for all the people around the driver.

“When I see Lando technically driving now, I think he’s just more capable of having an awareness of what he wants and finding the ways to get it, either from the car or from the engineers or from adapting this driving style.

“So all this process of optimisation, I think, is just more robust.”

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Norris spoke of this process in the post-race press conference in Hungary, saying that he’s chipped away at a number of different areas in order to unlock greater all-round performance.

“Right now, today, I would probably say it was up there with one of my best performances, in terms of extracting performance out of the car and being so close to the limit every single lap,” he said.

“So close that the team had to ask me to peg it back a little bit.

“So, honestly, although it kind of hurts me saying it because it doesn’t mean that you just win, I feel like I’m doing a better job this year than I was last year, and I have been for a little while.

“I’ve said that for a while. It just doesn’t mean you win the races, as I said before.

“So, today, when we had a car, I think the words I said, ‘I think my performance is some of my best,’ today proved exactly that: that I could go out and win very convincingly and be on pole in a good car.

“So I’m doing a better job, and that’s because of working in many different areas, some away from the track with my team and some here at the track as well. So, just working in as many areas as possible. A lot of small differences add up, and you see the result today.”

With Norris having spent the first half of the race cooped up behind Piastri, Stella revealed that the British driver had shown far greater emotional control in the situation than he may have done in the past, another indication of the increased confidence the 26-year-old has unlocked within himself.

“Lando is much more confident,” he said.

“I think he is much more aware of the tools that he has in his driving, how to deploy these tools, and I think he’s also, let me say, more in control of his emotions.

“When he was behind Oscar, he said a couple of times that he had pace in hand, but he didn’t get overly frustrated, and the fact that he wasn’t overly frustrated then allowed him to use the pace at the right time and led him to the victory.

“So I think we have seen a great trajectory of development for Lando.”

But while the championship victory may have enabled Norris to reach a new plane of performance, Stella pointed out that there are similar signs visible from Piastri.

“This is honestly the same with Oscar as well,” he said.

“Oscar is still getting in tune with these 2026 cars, low-grip cars, and there’s an opportunity there to find some pace, and there’s great work happening between Oscar, his engineering team, and the wider team of Oscar.

“So I think we will see a very strong Oscar for the second part of the season.”

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