After two consecutive wins, Lando Norris brutally faced reality at Monza. The world champion acknowledges that McLaren simply did not have the tools to compete with Mercedes.
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Lando Norris does not try to hide the extent of the gap observed at Monza. After winning the Hungarian and Dutch Grands Prix, the Briton could hope to extend his momentum in Italy and continue to reduce his championship deficit.
But the Italian Grand Prix delivered a very different verdict.
Norris and Oscar Piastri finished fourth and fifth, nearly 20 seconds behind Kimi Antonelli, winner ahead of George Russell. Mercedes thus recorded its first one-two since the season opener in Australia.
For Norris, the conclusion is simple: despite McLaren’s recent progress, Mercedes remains out of reach on certain types of circuits.
“Mercedes is still in a category of its own”
McLaren, however, uses the same Mercedes power unit as the official team.
That was not enough to erase the performance differences at Monza, where long straights, heavy braking, and slow corners highlighted several weaknesses of the MCL40.
Norris also acknowledges that Red Bull was more competitive.
“We have already seen in previous races that Red Bull can be very fast on this type of circuit, notably thanks to its good top speed, and this was confirmed again. They were better than us.”
But his judgment on Mercedes is even harsher.
“It was clear that Mercedes was still operating in a category apart from us.”
The Briton recalls that McLaren had dominated the two previous events.
“We won with larger margins in the last races, and they still kept scoring big points.”
At Monza, the situation completely reversed.
“We were not even close to fighting for the top two positions.”
A harsh reality check for McLaren
Norris does not hide his frustration, even though he assures that this underperformance is not really a surprise.
McLaren already expected to struggle more on the Italian track.
“It’s frustrating, but we said it before the weekend. We knew our expectations and that we still had work to do.”
The world champion identifies several areas where the MCL40 still needs to improve.
“We need to work on slow and medium-speed corners, on the car’s stability which is simply not good enough, as well as on our straight-line speed.”
For Norris, fixing these weaknesses would significantly change McLaren’s overall level.
“If we manage to fix that, then we will have solved a big part of our problems.”
An “awful” McLaren in clean air
Norris’s difficulties were already apparent in qualifying and were confirmed in the race.
The Briton explains notably that his MCL40 depended heavily on the slipstream of the cars ahead.
As long as he could stay in the wake of an opponent, his pace remained relatively competitive. As soon as he found himself in clean air, the situation became much more complicated.
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His duel with Pierre Gasly notably cost him dearly.
“What really determined my race was that every time I lost time on the guys ahead and lost their slipstream, it became very difficult.”
“When I fought with Pierre, we lost about two seconds and I lost contact with the cars ahead.”
Norris then started to reduce the gap, before noticing how much his pace dropped when he had no one ahead.
“As soon as we were in clean air, we were catastrophic. Our pace was simply awful.”
McLaren needed to be “pulled”
The conclusion is surprising for a team that had just won two consecutive races.
Norris explains that McLaren almost needed another car ahead to mask some of its weaknesses.
“We needed someone ahead to pull us and, at that moment, we could compete. We were more on equal footing.”
This peculiarity created a paradoxical situation.
“It was almost a good thing not to stay too long in front, because when you were ahead, you generally tended to fall back.”
Conversely, following an opponent could allow exploiting the slipstream and getting back into the fight.
“When you were behind, you always felt like you could move forward.”
Patience rewarded at the end of the race
Norris therefore had to adapt his driving style and wait for the right moment to attack.
“It was always a difficult position to manage and sometimes you just had to be a bit patient.”
This patience finally paid off in the last laps.
The Briton managed to overtake Oscar Piastri on the final lap to take fourth place.
“For me, it worked in the last two laps. So I think fourth place was really the maximum we could get.”
He also considers that the team result remains fair given McLaren’s real level at Monza.
“Fourth and fifth, for us as a team, was a good result.”
Mercedes reminds who remains the benchmark
The Italian underperformance does not erase the progress made by McLaren in recent weeks, but it shows that the hierarchy remains very dependent on the characteristics of each circuit.
At Zandvoort and Hungary, Norris was able to take advantage of the MCL40’s qualities to win. At Monza, its weaknesses in top speed, slow corners, and stability were much harder to mask.
Mercedes, on the other hand, exploited all the qualities of its package to secure an authoritative one-two.
Norris therefore leaves Italy with a very clear message for McLaren: the two previous wins do not mean that the team has definitively joined Mercedes at the top. On a circuit like Monza, the gap remains considerable, to the point that the Briton believes his rival was simply operating in “another category”.