Lando Norris has urged McLaren and power unit supplier Mercedes to do better after suffering an agonising engine failure at the Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.
Norris was forced into back-to-back retirements after the power unit on his MCL40 “completely went” during the 78-lap race on the streets of the Principality, on Sunday.
The reigning F1 World Champion had been nursing his engine throughout the race, but was asked to park it up in the pit lane once the issue was diagnosed as terminal.
Six rounds into the 2026 campaign, Norris has already suffered a DNS and two power unit-related DNFs.
“There were some issues at the beginning, and then more in the middle, and I don’t know if they’re related or not, but I just got told to retire the car, so not a lot I can do nowadays,” he told media including Motorsport Week.
“It was just a lot of stuff, like I could hear from the engine, the turbo, the battery, a lot of things that don’t sound correct.
“We tried to fix it, it made the problem worse. We put it back, so I had the problems again, but seemed to have to live with it, and then in the end they just completely went.”
Mercedes F1 PU reliability “not good enough” – Lando Norris
The Woking-based team has already used up three PUs and batteries on Norris’ car.
Any additional component after the fourth will incur the Briton a grid penalty for each subsequent component.
Naturally, Norris has urged both, McLaren and Mercedes to pull their socks up and tighten up these reliability gremlins that have seemingly derailed his championship defence even before it could properly kick off.
“Problem is I’m on my third power unit already, third battery, and I’m taking penalties from this one onward,” Norris explained.
“So hopefully that’s not the case, but I don’t know what to expect nowadays.
“It seems like every weekend we have something, but it’s not just McLaren, it’s Mercedes as well – and between HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains] and McLaren, we have to do a better job, because it’s just not good enough.”
Norris will hope to have a better outing this weekend as F1 moves onto the Circuit-de Barcelona-Catalunya for the Barcelona-Catalunya GP.
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