Norris ‘confident’ McLaren can get back to having the ‘best car on the grid’ in 2026 amid tough start to season

Lando Norris remains confident that McLaren can still build the “best car on the grid” in 2026, with the Briton admitting that he and the team “have to be patient” following a tough start to the campaign.

While Norris claimed P5 in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, the squad endured a challenging outing one week on in China when both Norris and team mate Oscar Piastri were unable to start the race due to separate technical issues.

During Thursday’s media day ahead of Round 3 of the season in Japan, Norris responded positively when asked if the team had been able to fully understand the problems.

“Yep, alongside HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains],” the reigning World Champion explained. “It took a little bit of time to figure things out. Of course it hurt us as a team – it certainly didn’t make us look good to have two cars not starting a race.

“I think what hurt more is the fact it was out of our control, but with HPP we’ve worked hard to figure things out, to understand how it happened, why it happened, and of course we’ll do everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“You live and you learn – it was a tough one for all of us. None of us want to have a weekend like that, and especially starting Sunday like that. It hurt a lot, but I think at the same time a good time for us to learn, step back and move on to this weekend.”

Despite the tricky start to 2026, Norris believes that there is still plenty to get out of the MCL40.

“The car’s got a lot of potential,” he conceded. “We’re certainly not where we want it to be. I think the real question to ask is would I rather be here and have won last year, or would I rather have a slightly better car now and not have won last year, and I think you know what my answer would be.

“You can’t have the best of everything, and I think as a team we certainly are not where we want to be and where we desire to be, but I think we all know within the team what we can achieve. Now is just as good of a time as ever to prove exactly what we can do as a team, against Ferrari, against Mercedes, who are performing very well at the minute.

“But I know the boys and the girls back at the factory are working very hard, and there’s good progress happening – it takes time to improve on some things.

“It’s not like we’re bad, we’re still the third best team at the minute, but we certainly enjoy being first a lot more than third. Time will tell – we’ve got some things in the pipeline and everyone’s working hard, so we’re ambitious to get back to the top.”

With McLaren having good form when it comes to turning their prospects around – having enjoyed a particularly memorable resurgence in 2024, a season in which they claimed their first Teams’ Championship since 1998 – Norris is also confident that the squad can still get themselves back to the front this year.

“I can’t remember how many points we were behind in 2024 from Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari, but I think we were over 150 points behind and we still managed to come back and win the Constructors’,” the 26-year-old said.

“I don’t know how far behind we are now – it’s already quite a bit. But I think we’re not necessarily thinking of that just yet – what we are thinking of is getting on the podium first of all and then returning to winning races.

“The points then take care of themselves and we’ll see what we can claw back, and we’re confident in that. We’re confident as a team and we believe in ourselves, that we won the last two championships and we won the Drivers’ last year because we could build the best car on the grid, and I’m confident we can get back to doing that this year.

“It just takes time – you have to be patient, but I have good belief in the team and I think we can have the best car this year.”