After a start to the season far from his ambitions, Lando Norris no longer hides his frustration towards McLaren and believes the team must improve in several areas to regain the expected level.
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Lando Norris is struggling to regain the expected dominance since the start of the 2026 season. After nine Grands Prix, the McLaren driver has only two podiums and is in fifth place in the drivers’ championship.
With an 82-point deficit to leader Kimi Antonelli before the Belgian Grand Prix, the Briton sees his chances of retaining his world crown seriously compromised.
During his home Grand Prix at Silverstone, Norris finished fourth, notably benefiting from difficulties encountered at the end of the race by Antonelli and Max Verstappen to gain two positions in the final laps.
But behind this decent result, the driver’s feeling remains much more negative.
A radio message revealing Norris’s frustration
The tension notably appeared during the sprint race held at Silverstone. After moving up from sixth to third on the grid, Norris delivered a very direct radio message to his team during the cooldown lap.
“Do things properly for once, please.”
A phrase that quickly caused a stir in the paddock. Asked about the meaning of this message, the McLaren driver nevertheless refused to go into details.
He did however acknowledge that some aspects of the team’s operation needed improvement.
“There are just a few small things, to be honest. I don’t need to go into details, but these are areas where we should simply do better.”
According to him, these errors or approximations prevent McLaren from fully exploiting its potential.
“These are elements that limit our performance and our ability to secure podiums and points when we need them. So these are things we need to improve as a team.”
A difficult MCL40 to drive according to Norris
After the main race at Silverstone, Norris once again did not hide his dissatisfaction regarding the behavior of his car.
Despite his fourth-place finish, he believes the result does not truly reflect McLaren’s performance level.
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“Everything was quite catastrophic except the result. I don’t even know how we finished fourth today.”
For him, reliability and competitors’ mistakes played more in McLaren’s favor than the pure speed of the car.
“A big part of the performance today also relies on not making mistakes and being reliable. We managed that, but the pace was quite bad.”
The Briton even goes as far as to describe the MCL40 as one of the most difficult cars he has driven in Formula 1.
“It’s not a nice car to drive. It’s probably one of the most difficult cars I’ve had in F1.”
McLaren must find solutions quickly
Asked about McLaren’s inconsistent performances depending on the circuits, Norris rejected the idea of a simple adaptation problem to the tracks.
The Briton notably recalls his excellent result obtained in Miami, where he was able to fight for the win, but believes that performance was more related to the difficulties of the opponents.
“We have been slow all year. In Miami, the others probably didn’t do a good job.”
According to him, the competition has progressed faster thanks to new technical developments.
“There is no reason why we finished second in Miami and have a car like today. The others have brought many improvements since, and we haven’t really found as much performance.”
While McLaren remains one of the most anticipated teams on the grid, Lando Norris now expects a quick reaction. At Spa-Francorchamps, the team will have to provide concrete answers to allow its world champion to regain lost confidence.
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