Lando Norris
McLaren
Mercedes
Red Bull
Ferrari
Williams
Racing Bulls
Aston Martin
Haas
Alpine
Lando Norris has made an honest admission that his own success may have set McLaren back ‘months’.
Norris, 26, reached the pinnacle of motorsports in 2025 when he became the 11th British driver to win the Formula 1 world championship.
The Bristol-born driver had to first claw back a large deficit against McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri before having to hold off a late charge from four-time world champion Max Verstappen.
Eventually, the title fight went down to the wire, with Norris clinching his maiden title by finishing just two points ahead of Verstappen.
However, his title defence has not gone as well as he would have hoped, with McLaren currently struggling to keep pace with the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes.
Give us your podium prediction for the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend 👇
Lando Norris admits title fight has taken its toll on McLaren
Speaking recently, Norris admitted that fighting for last season’s world championship has impacted McLaren’s preparation for the 2026 campaign.
The 26-year-old alluded to the fact that McLaren had to focus more on 2025 than most other teams on the grid, as they had a ‘big fight’ to become world champions.
He admitted that McLaren are ‘a couple of months’ behind their rivals, but hinted that there is a long way to go and they have shown in previous years that they are more than capable of reducing the deficit.
When asked what people can expect from McLaren in the second half of the season, Norris said on Axios Live: “Oh, we’re not even like through the first half yet! It’s still a very long way to go. It feels like we’ve almost done half a year already, but we have a very long way to go.
“What can we expect? What we are aiming for is a big improvement from ourselves. We’re fighting for a world championship last year, we got a world championship, we got two, constructors and drivers.
“That takes its toll. That takes its toll on consecutive years with a new regulation this year, so we’ve not started exactly where we wanted to, but the main thing is we’re optimistic we can still fight for a lot in the second half of the season.”
Where would Max Verstappen and Lando Norris rank among McLaren’s greatest line-ups?
READ MORE: Max Verstappen and Lando Norris cannot ‘exploit’ one of their ‘strengths’ anymore, says Franz Tost
Norris added: “Two years ago, we were 100-something points behind, and we still managed to win the constructors, and we thought that was too easy, so we’re trying to make it harder for ourselves this year.
“Some of the teams last year who were a bit out of the fight and not kind of caring about the season so much could shift a lot more focus to this season.
“But we had a big fight on, and we’re proud to be world champions, but we know that would just make the start of this season a bit tougher. We’re a couple of months behind everyone, but we’re catching up, and that’s exactly what we want.”
It has been well documented that Norris’ 2026 season has not gone well so far, having been hit with multiple issues on his car.
The reigning world champion is already on his third and final battery allowed for the season, having had failures in China and Japan.
At this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, McLaren were unable to give Norris an upgrade due to him being on the cusp of a grid penalty.
In addition, the Brit’s FP1 session was impacted by another technical issue, resulting in him getting less than 10 minutes of run time.
Despite that, Norris managed to impress, finishing P7 in FP1 before moving up to P3 in FP2.
Receive exclusive F1 news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
