Norris Says McLaren Must Improve After Silverstone

• Lando Norris said McLaren “have a lot to improve” after a difficult British Grand Prix that yielded fourth place.
• Norris benefited from late trouble for Kimi Antonelli and Max Verstappen, admitting his own pace over the weekend did not match the result.
• Teammate Oscar Piastri finished 11th after front wing damage from a first-lap incident forced an early pit stop.

Reigning World Champion Lando Norris says McLaren “have a lot to improve” after a difficult British Grand Prix that yielded fourth place at their home event.

Norris never troubled the leaders in Sunday’s 52-lap race at Silverstone, but moved up the order late on after car problems for Kimi Antonelli and a crash for Max Verstappen. Norris finished third in Saturday’s Sprint, yet he and McLaren endured a tough weekend at their home race, unable to match the outright pace of Ferrari and Mercedes.

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‘Quite Remarkable’ Results, Concerning Pace

Asked to sum up his weekend, Norris pointed to a gap between how the car felt and where he ended up on the results sheet.

“Considering how not nice it’s felt out there, P4 and a P3 this weekend in the Sprint is quite remarkable,” Norris said. “Of course we were lucky today, but the race is also about finishing. It’s about reliability and not making mistakes. I don’t know what happened to Max and Kimi.”

He said the day itself had not gone smoothly even before other cars fell away. “Poor start today, I don’t know why, so we have to understand some things. Also the car just wasn’t very nice in any way whatsoever today, so we have a lot to improve,” Norris said.

He separated the value of the points from the pace behind them. “The positive is the results,” Norris said, “but the pace to get them was really, really not good. We need to take a big step forward.”

A Problem Norris Flagged Before the Race

Norris had already warned about McLaren’s pace after qualifying sixth on Saturday, five places behind polesitter Kimi Antonelli. McLaren brought upgrades to Silverstone and adjusted the setup between sessions, yet he was surprised by the gap to the cars ahead.

“It was pretty poor really in terms of gap to the cars ahead,” Norris said after qualifying. “I thought my lap was pretty strong, it was my best lap by half a second, so thankfully I was not 1.3 seconds off. It was a good lap. I think I got everything out of it.”

He described the car’s shortfall in blunt terms. “We’re just slow. I thought we improved the car in some areas but we need to understand, like we’re just slow in the straight, we’re slow in every corner. We lack downforce and we have too much drag. So yeah, we’re in a pickle,” Norris said.

He pointed to Silverstone’s demands specifically. Silverstone punishes any car carrying excess drag, with long straights and few places to rely on a straight-line mode for relief, he explained, adding that McLaren was struggling in both high-speed and low-speed corners alike. “This shows who has a good car and who doesn’t, and it’s clear that we don’t,” he said.

Asked what he expected from the race itself, Norris set modest expectations. “I have no idea. I mean, we’ll try and get a good start again, obviously what made my race this morning was a good start. I don’t know how I finished P3 this morning when we’re seven tenths a lap off, you know that’s pretty insane,” he said. “I think realistically a P5 should be best. We try and beat the Red Bulls, that’s the main thing we can ask for.”

Piastri, who qualified eighth, two places behind his teammate, agreed the session had been difficult even after changes made to the car overnight. Asked where McLaren was lacking pace, he was equally direct: “Everywhere,” he said. “Just incredibly tough. We thought we made some decent improvements to the car, but I don’t know if we just struggled a lot more in these windier conditions or what happened, but it was a real handful.”

“The car has definitely been more challenging than we expected,” Piastri added. “Been struggling a lot with the balance of the car. We were pretty optimistic that we’d made a good step forward for Qualifying but unfortunately it didn’t change much. Just struggling for grip overall.”

Grip and Downforce, in Short Supply

Norris said the MCL40 has “not got enough grip and not enough downforce,” a shortfall that showed up most clearly around Silverstone’s flowing, high-speed layout, a track that rewards a car with confidence through fast changes of direction.

That description matched what he had already flagged the day before. Both his qualifying and race-day comments pointed to the same underlying issue: a car that lacked the downforce to carry speed through Silverstone’s faster sections without paying a heavy price in drag down the straights.

With upgrades in the pipeline, Norris said he still believed McLaren could recover ground before the title fight is decided. “I’m still confident that the team can turn things around. The team can build race-winning cars and championship-winning cars, so I’m not concerned about it,” he said.

He was direct about the urgency of that recovery. “It’s just a race against time at the minute. I’m not out of the race, I don’t believe I am out of the race just yet. But we need stuff now, not later,” Norris said.

Piastri’s Race Undone at Turn Six

Oscar Piastri had an even harder afternoon than his teammate, picking up front wing damage on the opening lap that forced an early pit stop and left him without a realistic route to the points. He eventually finished 11th.

“I got sandwiched by the Racing Bulls on the way to Turn 6, three-wide down the straight, and three into one didn’t work,” Piastri said, describing the opening-lap squeeze that damaged his car before the race had properly begun.

The incident meant Piastri spent the rest of the afternoon managing a damaged front wing rather than racing for position, a contrast to Norris’s late climb up the order once trouble struck for the cars ahead of him.

A Title Defence Under Pressure

Norris is defending the championship he won last year, and the pace deficit at Silverstone leaves McLaren needing its upgrades to arrive quickly if that defence is to remain realistic. Both Ferrari and Mercedes have shown stronger race pace across recent rounds, and Norris’s own admission that the car “wasn’t very nice in any way whatsoever” points to a wider handling problem rather than a single-track issue.

Silverstone was supposed to be a home race to build momentum from. Instead, both McLaren drivers left Northamptonshire with results that flattered a weekend neither wants to repeat, and a clear message from their lead driver that the current car is not yet good enough.

Formula 1 next moves to the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps on July 17 to 19, giving McLaren two weeks to bring the changes Norris said the team needs “now, not later.”

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Written by

Jack Renn

Jack Renn is an editor at F1 Chronicle and a veteran motorsport journalist with 25 years of experience covering Formula 1 and international motorsport. A member of the Association Internationale de la Presse Sportive (AIPS), the global body representing accredited sports journalists, Jack has spent his career reporting from paddocks and press rooms across the F1 calendar. His work spans race analysis, technical insight, and in-depth features, giving readers authoritative coverage grounded in decades of firsthand experience at the highest level of the sport.

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