Look, nobody said defending a championship was going to be clean. According to Motorsport.com Italia, Lando Norris arrives at Singapore nursing the bruises of two rough weekends where he dragged a meager two points out of the calendar. The McLaren machine simply hasn't behaved, bleeding straight-line speed that left the driver howling in frustration.
“It’s difficult when you exit better from the corners and then you find yourself losing ground in acceleration,” Norris said. In a field this tight, those power gremlins cost him two or three positions in the last two qualifications alone. The team reckons they have hunted down the fuel system anomalies that throttled the MCL40's top end, swapping out components to be safe. But Norris is refusing to exhale until the tires bite the tarmac in Singapore's first practice.
Baku and Sepang were hardly kinder, exposing a wider dip in competitiveness that left the team scratching their heads. Yet the driver insists he is actually better behind the wheel than when he claimed the crown. We are talking razor-thin margins here—shifting from squeezing 99 percent out of the package to extracting 99.5 percent. Three pole positions this year, all secured by less than half a tenth, prove the point. Two of those became wins, while Madrid slipped away only because of a Virtual Safety Car.
Now add the 2026 technical regulations to the mix, demanding a completely different relationship with the power unit and tires. Norris maintains he has mastered that extra layer of complexity faster than most, even if the standings refuse to show it. When your hardware drops off, the goalposts shift dramatically.
“My job is to extract the maximum from myself every weekend,” Norris explained. “Naturally I’d be happier if that meant winning, but in Formula 1 you have to understand what the maximum possible result is for your team. This weekend a victory, for us, might be a fifth or a third place.”
Singapore now serves as the ultimate litmus test. With its lower emphasis on top speed and a Sprint format relying on a single practice session to find the limit, it's a stage built for a driver who thrives on quick adaptations. Whether McLaren has truly turned the corner from their recent nightmare is about to find out.
