Lando Norris is adamant McLaren will not be “giving up” on its title ambitions despite a rocky start to the 2026 Formula 1 season.
The Woking-based team came into F1’s latest era as the defending Constructors’ Champions. That said, the form book has not reflected that status three rounds into this season.
Norris, who beat Max Verstappen by a slender margin of two points to bag his maiden Drivers’ title last year, is yet to score a podium.
His team-mate, Oscar Piastri, on the other hand, already has two DNSs to his name.
That said, McLaren showed promise at the Japanese Grand Prix, with Piastri finishing behind championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli at the chequered flag.
Despite this not-so-ideal start to his title defence, and being a whopping 47 points behind the leader already, Norris isn’t writing 2026 off just yet.
“I think we can have a good season, even if we’re not where we want to be right now,” he said.
“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.”
Lando Norris outlines F1 development path for McLaren
Early analysis has pegged the Mercedes power unit as the benchmark of the field. It is arguably the strongest package in terms of performance and reliability.
But there has been growing discontent within the German marque’s customer teams in terms of not getting ‘the full picture’.
information with respect to the PU optimisation and mapping has reportedly been sparse from Mercedes.
Norris, thus, believes that the onus is now on the team to log as much data as it can to optimise the “tiny margins” that he feels will be “significant” in the long run.
“We’re not in a terrible position, but we’ve definitely got to work to get back in contention for wins,” he added.
“Then, we need to keep going to make sure we’ve got a car capable of winning every single weekend. 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.
“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.
“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 were] back behind the wheel for a tyre test at the Nurburgring. Despite that test being focused on tyres for next year, time behind the wheel is certainly never going to hurt.”
The five weeks’ off between the Japanese GP and Miami have therefore been crucial to Norris and McLaren’s plans.
Naturally, half-way into the F1 ‘Spring Break’ the Woking-based team would be looking to get back on track in more competitive trim for the remainder of the season.
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