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Lando Norris believes McLaren can still salvage a strong Belgian Grand Prix weekend despite a 10-place grid penalty at Spa-Francorchamps.
The reigning champion will drop 10 places on the grid after McLaren elected to fit a new fourth control electronics system to his car. The change allows Norris to benefit from reliability fixes deployed by Mercedes HPP, but it also takes him beyond the 2026 allocation of three control electronics systems without penalty.
Oscar Piastri will also receive a new ICE engine at Spa, although that component remains within the permitted allocation and does not trigger a grid drop. McLaren’s decision involving Norris follows a familiar Formula 1 calculation: Spa’s long lap and overtaking opportunities generally make it a more suitable venue for absorbing an engine-related penalty than the Hungaroring or, in recent years, Zandvoort.
The wider technical picture is also central to McLaren’s weekend. The team’s Mercedes reliability upgrade has already been highlighted in this preview of McLaren’s Belgian Grand Prix engine changes.
Norris, however, is not assuming that recovering from the back of the field will be straightforward. He acknowledged that overtaking could be more difficult than Spa’s reputation might suggest, particularly because of how drivers use their battery on the run towards Les Combes.
“We will have to wait and see how the overtaking is,” Norris told media, including RacingNews365. “Most people would deploy basically the whole battery to Turn 5, Les Combes, and you would go from pretty much 100% battery to zero, so there is not much use for the battery, so we have to wait and see.”
McLaren does expect to hold a small straight-line speed advantage over cars further back, giving Norris a potential tool in traffic. Yet he stressed that the overall overtaking picture remains uncertain.
“But the slipstream is pretty big, and there are still a few straights where there is no straight mode, and therefore the slipstream is pretty large, and you can gain a good amount for that,” he said.
Norris ultimately sees Spa as the least damaging option available, even if the recovery is not guaranteed. “We know it is better than Zandvoort and better than Hungary to take penalties,” he added. “I hope it is not the end of my weekend before it starts, but I am confident we can have a good weekend.”
For McLaren, the objective is clear: convert Spa’s straights, slipstream and potential speed advantage into enough on-track progress to make the penalty a manageable setback rather than a defining result.
He’s a software engineer with a deep passion for Formula 1 and motorsport. He co-founded Formula Live Pulse to make live telemetry and race insights accessible, visual, and easy to follow.