Lando Norris delivers bleak McLaren verdict

Lando Norris has painted a bleak outlook for McLaren’s hopes as F1 heads to the United States Grand Prix.

The 2025 world champion admitted that his car is “a long way off” despite finishing fourth in Singapore and noted that “the car is not quick enough” to offer any serious threat.

Lando Norris details McLaren struggles

Winner of the Hungarian and Dutch Grands Prix, Norris has claimed three pole positions this season to sit fifth in the drivers’ championship.

However, he is not expecting that form to remain at the Circuit of The Americas with Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari all looking to have made ground in recent races.

“The car is not quick enough, and it’s too difficult to drive,” he confessed when asked by PlanetF1.com and others about his hopes in the United States Grand Prix.

“We’re a long way off.”

Since Norris’ win at Zandvoort, the first race back after F1’s summer break, McLaren has had just one other podium – a third place for the Brit at the Spanish Grand Prix.

In that time, Max Verstappen has won twice for Red Bull, and delivered three other podiums, with teammate Isack Hadjar also on the podium in Azerbaijan.

It has seen the Milton Keynes operation close the gap to McLaren in the constructors’ championship, with optimism high given its recent run of form.

At McLaren, Norris offered further inside into the battle he and Oscar Piastri have in extracting pace from the MCL40.

“It’s just on a knife edge on every single corner,” he explained.

“You’ve just got to drive it within an exact percent, and you have to force the car in every single way.

“You can’t let the car do any work. You can’t just let the front do the work or the rear do the work. You have to force the front. You’ve got to force the rear.

“You’ve got to drive it in a way that takes so much concentration and so much ability, it’s just full on and mentally draining because of how hard you have to work behind the wheel.

“So it’s just too difficult, and it makes it impossible to put laps together in qualifying, which just show how good of a job we were able to do when we were getting on pole and things like that, and how rewarding that felt.

“But with it not being quick enough now, it’s just it’s too difficult, and you can’t do anything magical because you’re simply not quick enough.”

Norris’ comments come despite a steady stream of updates having found their way into the car over the season.

In Hungary, the team introduced a sizeable aerodynamic upgrade, with new brake ducts and rear wing at the Dutch GP.

For Azerbaijan, there were eight new elements aimed at reducing top-end drag, while the squad has also refined its Macarena rear wing.

Attention, however, has now shifted to next year’s car, with team boss Andrea Stella revealing that a smattering of new parts will arrive over coming races, a result of production timelines as much as anything else.

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“As we speak, all the efforts are already concentrated onto next year’s car, and what we see coming trackside is the result of parts being released a few weeks ago,” he told PlanetF1.com and other accredited media in Azerbaijan.

“The upgrades worked well throughout the weekend, we added some lap time to the car.

“Somehow, we did not see the effect of the upgrades because our car in general does not perform very well in these kinds of corners, so we would have needed a much bigger step to make a difference in Baku.”

Following the Singapore Grand Prix, the Italian offered an update on McLaren’s plans.

“We do plan to deliver some upgrades,” he insisted.

“We hope that they will be able to fill this gap that we have to the best cars and put McLaren in condition to fight for podiums on merit, and then whether we can fight for the victory.

“This I think we will have to see probably the last three races because this the upgrades will be delivered in phases.

“It’s important for us that we deliver upgrades because we are in a close fight for a championship position, but we also want to prove some of the fundamental concepts that will carry into next year’s car.

“At this level of maturity of the cars, you are starting to push the aerodynamic development, and you may start to see that things work, but some things may not work because aerodynamics is starting to get complicated enough after what it’s basically two years of development.

“If we consider that the development started the 2 January 2025, and now we are well into 2026, so after two years now, that it’s complex.

“It may go right, it may go wrong. So we wanted to track test some of the fundamentals we carry into next year.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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