“We still want to push hard for the championship”, Lando Norris eager not to write off 2026

Reigning world champion Lando Norris is eager not to write off the 2026 F1 season, despite a tough start for McLaren, saying: “we still want to push hard for the championship.”

Speaking during McLaren recent tyre test at the Nürburgring, the 26-year old and teammate Oscar Piastri candidly discussed their season to date, as well as expressing optimism about the remaining 19 races.

“It’s not been the start of the season we had hoped for, and we’ve had some difficult weekends so far,” said Norris, who’s best result so far has been a pair of fifths either side of the Chinese Grand Prix.

A Chinese Grand Prix unfortunately marred by a disastrous and rare double-DNS, with neither Norris or Piastri seeing the start of the race due to separate power-unit related issues.

“Obviously, coming into the year as defending champions both as a team and as a driver, the expectations we set ourselves are high. We want to be taking pole positions, winning races and leading both championships, but that’s not where we are.

“We’re not in a terrible position, but we’ve definitely got to work to get back in contention for wins, and even then, we need to keep going to make sure we’ve got a car capable of winning every single weekend.

“Tiny, tiny margins make significant differences. Combine that with the fact that we didn’t start the Grand Prix in China, and that we didn’t get enough track time during practice in Japan, and it’s easy to see where we’re lacking.

“We’ve also had some issues that really haven’t helped our development of these cars. One thing we realised very early is that time in the car, and getting laps on the board, is so important when it comes to learning how to get the most out of the car, and specifically the power unit.”

Much of the conversation in 2026 has revolved around the all-new 50/50 split power-units and the perceived advantage that the works Mercedes team has over its customers. Of which one is McLaren. While F1 forbids lesser engine specifications for customer teams, understanding of a power-unit or lack of can still be a disadvantage – to which Norris alludes to.

“However, we’re using this gap between Japan and Miami to do what we can to fill that gap in our understanding. We’re putting a lot of time in on the sim, and we’re back behind the wheel for a tyre test at the Nürburgring. Despite that test being focused on tyres for next year, time behind the wheel is certainly never going to hurt.”

Norris references too the impressive development pushes that McLaren have made in recent years under the leadership of Andrea Stella, citing the stronger positions they’ve ended up relative to the start of the seasons in 2023 and 2024.

McLaren in 2023 went from having both cars eliminated in Q1 on pace, with neither car finishing the season opening Bahrain Grand Prix – to ending the season as the second-best team behind Red Bull.

“I think we can have a good season, even if we’re not where we want to be right now. And although we haven’t started the season where we want to be, we still want to push hard for the championship, this isn’t a case of giving up and focusing on next year – I’m not sure if that approach ever really works.

“There’s plenty of examples where we’ve not quite been where we want to be at the start of the year, but have ended up in a much stronger position by the end – 2023, 2024 and so on, and we’re a stronger team now than we were then. We’ve been there, done it, learned from it and I trust that this team knows how to do it again. Plenty of hard work ahead, but we’re ready for it.”

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Written by

Jawad Yaqub

An eCommerce Specialist by day and reporting on F1 by night. Jawad is passionate about motorsport, having provided accredited F1 coverage for more than a decade. Live blogging (almost) every grand prix too since 2014, as well as articles on the Supercars Championship. Also keen on sustainability, photography, collecting vinyl, (trying to) expertly barbeque and learning to Dad.

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