Norris admits McLaren are ‘three months behind’ in F1 development race

Norris: McLaren must find more than one upgrade

Lando Norris has warned that McLaren are ‘two, three months behind’ their main rivals in the 2026 development race, insisting there is no single upgrade that will immediately restore the team to the front of Formula 1.

Barcelona offered a modest but important improvement on Norris’ side of the garage. The Briton qualified fourth and finished third, benefiting from a late retirement for Mercedes driver Kimi Antonelli. But while the result was welcome, Norris made clear that McLaren cannot treat it as evidence that the competitive picture has been transformed.

‘P3 was great, but we still need to do a lot better than that, especially if we want to catch up,’ Norris said. ‘As a team, we’ve had to try and just extract more from every individual, including myself.’

‘That’s not one upgrade’

Norris was equally direct when asked whether one effective development package could be enough to move McLaren back to the top of the order this season.

‘No. One good upgrade, no. We need three, four, five, but it depends,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you take one little piece at a time, sometimes you try to make something so everything goes together because it’s a new philosophy. We’re like two, three months behind – that’s not one upgrade.’

That assessment underlines the scale of the task facing McLaren. Norris believes the team may need three, four or five months to reduce the gap and reach the pace of its rivals, though he stressed that motivation inside the team remains strong.

As part of that push, Norris is due to trial a new experimental rear wing in Friday practice at the Red Bull Ring. The run follows McLaren’s broader Austrian GP evaluation plan, with further context available in our report on McLaren’s experimental rear wing test. Oscar Piastri has confirmed the part will only be tested at this stage, not raced.

After seven rounds, Norris sits fifth in the Drivers’ Championship, 83 points behind leader Antonelli. McLaren are third in the Teams’ standings on 141 points, behind Ferrari on 190 and Mercedes on 262.