Frustrated Norris concedes McLaren “nowhere near where we need to be”

Reigning Formula 1 champion Lando Norris believes the Australian Grand Prix highlighted that McLaren is “nowhere near where we need to be”.

Norris was the sole McLaren representative at Albert Park on Sunday, after team-mate Oscar Piastri spun his car into the wall on a pre-race sighting lap.

But after a year of success, Norris and McLaren never featured in the battle for the podium places, with the Briton eventually crossing the line 51.741s behind race winner George Russell.

Having been vocal in his criticism of the 2026 regulations and the racing it created, Norris turned his attention to McLaren’s on-track performance with equal intensity.

“I think that we maximised today,” he said. “Clearly, we’re a long way off the cars ahead, but I put up a good fight with Max [Verstappen]. I didn’t think we were going to stay ahead at the halfway point because he was already behind me and started last. So, I didn’t have much hope but we managed to do it.

“We made some improvements along the way. We improved and learned along the way and that was an important thing for us today, so we got better but it was still just a difficult race.”

But while McLaren lacked pace to Mercedes in qualifying and was unable to match the marque in the Grand Prix, Norris does not believe the season-opener painted the truest picture.

“Following and overtaking and all of those things make a big difference,” said Norris when asked where Sunday’s difference in pace had come from. “On pure pace, are we 50 seconds behind? No. If I had a clean race like George and didn’t have to battle as much, that would be a better look for us, but we had to.

“So I don’t think it’s dreadful. We killed the tyres after three laps and we have our front graining issues like we always have, and that’s not changed from one car to the next, so we have a lot to try and figure out. The good thing is we have a big gap to the cars behind. We’re similarish to Red Bull, but the bad thing is that we have a big gap to the cars ahead.

“Today was more of an understanding that we’re nowhere near where we need to be with the car, and we’ve got to improve that.”