Struggling throughout the weekend in the streets of the Principality, Lando Norris delivered a very harsh analysis of McLaren’s performance after qualifying far from the team’s ambitions.
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McLaren hoped to play a leading role in the streets of the Principality, but the reality was quite different. On a track where precision is paramount, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri failed to compete with the top teams, settling for seventh and eighth places on the starting grid.
The gap is particularly telling: more than six tenths separate them from the pole position set by Kimi Antonelli. In a field as tight as Monaco’s, such a delay constitutes a real chasm. For McLaren, the comparison with 2025 is all the more painful as the team had secured pole and victory there.
Norris speaks of a “brutal awakening”
Very direct in his analysis, the Briton described this performance as a real “reality check” for McLaren.
“It’s a bit of a reality check to see how far off we are” he admitted to several media outlets.
According to him, the difficulties encountered are not new and are part of a trend already observed in Montreal, particularly in the slow sections. Norris believes that the level shown in Monaco reveals the structural limits of the 2026 single-seater.
Beyond the raw result, the McLaren driver insists on the complicated nature of the MCL40. He describes a car that is unstable and difficult to anticipate, which makes exploiting its potential extremely delicate over a qualifying lap.
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“The car is simply very difficult to drive, it’s not very predictable or very forgiving” he explained, emphasizing that these characteristics particularly complicate performance in an environment as demanding as Monaco.
Confidence down in an extreme context
Norris also acknowledged a drop in confidence behind the wheel compared to the previous season. On a circuit where commitment must be total at every corner, this lack of serenity has direct consequences on overall performance.
“Last year, my confidence was at 100. Today, it’s closer to 85, and here in Monaco, you have to be at 100 to perform” he added, perfectly summarizing the current difficulty.
This result now places McLaren before a reality that is difficult to ignore. On a circuit where overtakes are extremely complicated, the starting positions risk condemning any ambitions of moving up in the race.
Beyond the simple result, Norris’s words sound like a clear warning: McLaren must quickly understand the weaknesses of its single-seater if it wants to remain in the fight with the best teams on the grid.
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