Lando Norris sees how his team McLaren has lost touch with the two top teams of the moment – Mercedes and Ferrari. The reigning world champion comes to this conclusion after the Australian GP, where there was nothing more in it than a fight with Max Verstappen for fifth place. The Briton was able to keep the Dutchman behind him, but according to Norris, that was not easy: ‘Halfway through the race I didn’t think I could finish ahead of him’.
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Lando Norris was at the start of his first race as reigning world champion in Melbourne. The Briton was allowed to start the race in sixth and managed to make up one place. In doing so, he had quite a task with Max Verstappen, who was now fighting with his former title rival for a place in the top five. Norris is visibly disappointed that the MCL40 currently lacks the competitiveness of its predecessor.
“It was difficult to understand things while racing like that,” Norris looks back on his race in Melbourne, speaking to F1TV. “We did learn things during the race. At the beginning we were quite slow, but at the end it went better. Compared to Max (Verstappen, ed.) then. Yet we weren’t even close to the cars in front of us (Mercedes and Ferrari, ed.).” Norris admits that during the race he didn’t even dare to hope to finish ahead of Verstappen. “We need to understand the engine even better. We’ll see how far we get with that for next week. It’s obvious that we need to improve the car a lot. I was still struggling with the car, so we have to see what we can improve.”
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‘It just hurts’
Yet Norris has not given up hope and believes that McLaren can still find the connection with the other top teams. “It just hurts a bit more after the last few years,” he admits honestly. McLaren was the team to beat during the 2024 and 2025 seasons. “I’m happy for George (Russell, ed.), he did a good job. Just like Mercedes and Ferrari. They did a better job than us. We need to learn quickly and understand the car better, but that takes some time. We’re doing our best.”
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