Lando Norris brands F1 2026 cars ‘even worse’ in races after Melbourne opener

A despondent Lando Norris has said the new F1 2026 cars are “even worse” in race spec than in qualifying.

The reigning World Champion kicked off his title defence with a distant fifth-place finish in Melbourne, holding off Max Verstappen in the closing stages of the Australian Grand Prix.

Lando Norris: F1 2026 cars feel worse in race than qualifying trim

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Norris became the sole McLaren representative in the Australian Grand Prix even before the race started, as Oscar Piastri crashed out on his way to the grid.

Starting from sixth on the grid, Norris duly turned this into fifth as he proved unable to keep up with the battle of the Mercedes and Ferraris up ahead but, having been caught by a recovering Max Verstappen in the closing stages, the duo traded blows in what McLaren dubbed a game of “energy chess” – a game Norris won.

Norris finished 51 seconds off the winner, George Russell, after the leading cars had held each other up through squabbling in the early stages as Russell and Charles Leclerc traded positions through their respective energy cycles.

Starting his title defence with fifth place, Norris was clearly not in great spirits as he climbed out to speak to the media after the chequered flag, as he summed up the new regulations as “even worse” in race trim than in qualifying.

The British driver’s stance on the new cars has shifted from a jokey enjoyment in Bahrain to a much more damning indictment as the first Grand Prix weekend of the year rolled around.

He went as far as to label the new machines F1’s “worst cars ever”, echoing the sentiments of fellow world champion Verstappen that the 50/50 split between the internal combustion engine and the electric motors simply “doesn’t work”.

“[It’s] not as fun as last year, but it is what it is. And I think we maximised today,” he told media, including PlanetF1.com, after claiming the cars are “even worse” on race day.

“Clearly, we’re a very long way off the cars ahead, but I put up a good fight with Max. I didn’t think we were going to stay ahead at the halfway point because he was already behind me, and he started last!

“So I didn’t have much hope, but we managed to do it. And yeah, we made some improvements on the way.

“We improved. We learned along the way, and that was an important thing for us today. ”

Addressing the driving dynamics specifically, and the effects on the racing, Norris agreed with the suggestion that the increased level of overtaking is merely down to artificial circumstances of respective battery deployment amongst teams.

“[It’s] way too much. It’s chaos,” he said.

“There’s gonna be a big accident, which is a shame that you’re kind of driving, and we’re the ones just waiting for something to happen and something to go quite horribly wrong, and that’s not a nice position to be in.

“There’s nothing we can really do about that now. So, yeah, it’s a shame. It’s very artificial, depending on just what the power unit decides to do and randomly does at times.

“You just get overtaken by five cars, and you can do nothing about it sometimes.”

More on the Australian Grand Prix

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Asked for possible suggestions on what might fix the issues with the new regulations, Norris said it’s not his role to come up with solutions.

“There’s nothing we can change about it, so there’s no point talking about it anymore,” he said.

“It’s just depending on what people do, you can have a 30, 40, or 50 kph speed. So when someone hits someone at that speed, you’re gonna fly, and you’re gonna go over the fence, and you’re gonna do a lot of damage to yourself and maybe to others.

“That’s a pretty horrible thing to think about.

“[But] that’s not my job. Of course, we’ll say what we need to say as drivers.

“Of course, some will be happier than others, and I understand that, of course, but, at the same time, it’s what we have, and we’ve [McLaren] clearly not done anywhere near as good a job as some other teams.

“Even on the opening lap, we didn’t do as good a job compared to some of the teams around us. So we just need to improve ourselves first.

“Today was, I think, more of an understanding that we’re nowhere near where we need to be with the car, and we’ve got to improve.”

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