Lando Norris has stood up for McLaren's 2026 development trajectory ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix, maintaining that the squad has enjoyed a pretty good year despite a bruising start to the campaign.
The reigning World Champions endured a sluggish opening under the new regulations, hitting an early trough that featured a double Did Not Start for Norris and McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in China. Yet, the garage clawed its way forward through the months, a recovery highlighted by back-to-back victories for Norris in Hungary and the Netherlands, alongside a near-miss in Madrid where an ill-timed Virtual Safety Car robbed him of a third win.
Even as handling struggles and heavy upgrades from rivals have pushed McLaren back from the leading group in recent rounds, Norris remains fiercely proud of the graft put in by the factory. Speaking on Thursday's media day in Mexico City, the driver laid bare the reality of their machinery.
"The car has been horrible and difficult to drive the whole season, just other teams have brought a lot more upgrades since and improved a lot more than what we have. Nothing more than that," said Norris.
He pointed to their starting deficit as context for their achievements, noting they were nearly one and a half seconds or one second off the pace at the start of the year. "The fact we even won almost three races was a pretty sizeable achievement in itself," Norris added. "So I think we’ve had a pretty good year, if we want to look at it from that perspective. Of course, we hold ourselves to a very high level, and we want to win everything we can. We started a long way behind at the beginning of the season, and we’ve done a good job to catch up. We’ve done better than the majority of other teams on the grid."
Right now, McLaren are locked in a dead heat on points with Red Bull for P3 in the teams' standings, heavily pressured by two recent victories delivered by Max Verstappen.
Looking down the barrel of the remainder of 2026, Piastri admitted that defending that position against Red Bull will be a massive test while development already shifts toward 2027, but the Australian is keeping his eyes on the fight.
"You just have to keep fighting. I think at the moment we know we’re not as competitive consistently as Red Bull are, but we’re adding performance to the car still, and there’s a lot of things that can happen," said Piastri. "Reliability has been a big topic this year, so there’s still plenty of ways it can turn. But clearly, on pure performance, we need to make some steps forward, and we do still have some things coming to the car that’ll hopefully help with that. I think for us, it’s going to be a big challenge to stay ahead of Red Bull, but we’re always up for it."
