Lando Norris shares verdict after first day in new McLaren F1 car

Lando Norris said it felt “pretty surreal” to drive around as the reigning world champion as he debuted McLaren’s 2026 F1 car.

McLaren’s MCL40, sporting a stealthy black testing livery, made its very first appearance on track as the reigning world champions joined F1’s behind closed doors shakedown in Barcelona on Wednesday.

Norris, running the number 1 on the nose of his car for the first time as F1’s defending world champion, completed 77 laps and managed a fastest lap of 1m18.307 seconds which placed him third on the timesheet.

"It was just nice to be back here, nice to see the number one on my car. Pretty cool, pretty surreal still, so good feelings,” Norris said as he reflected on his first day driving McLaren’s brand new car.

"Our first day on track, the first time that everyone gets to see the car in one piece. It's literally not been built until this morning, so it's an incredible thing. Nice to see it all come together, nice to see all the hard work that everyone does. And then I get to go and have some fun and drive it, which turned out to be a decent day.

"Today was really just a first understanding of the whole car, understanding just how it works, going through the manual of everything. A productive day, but it's one that's really about just figuring stuff out, making sure things are working as they should, understanding things, getting our first picture on all of it.”

Asked for his first impressions of McLaren’s MCL40, which has been built to F1’s new regulation set, the 26-year-old Briton replied: "It's pretty different. It's a step slower in terms of cornering speeds.

“In terms of acceleration and straightline speed, it probably feels quicker than it did last year, you get to 340, 350 quite a bit quicker than we did in previous years.

"But then you have a bit more to understand from the battery, the power unit, all of those things are in some ways more complicated and just different. And whenever something's different, it always takes a bit of time to figure out the best way to manage it.”

McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall confirmed the MCL40 ran smoothly and without major problems.

"The car ran pretty well today, we're quite happy with it, no nasties, no really scary things went wrong," he said. "There are obviously little gremlins here and there but we ironed those out during the day.

"We really treat this week as a shakedown, so this is for us to get the car reliable, running, and make sure it'll run in all the conditions we want it to run in.

“We're going all the way around the envelope trying every single bit we can and then when we get to Bahrain we'll try and dial the car in a bit better. The conditions here are so cold that doing representative lap times is obviously going to be very difficult.”

Oscar Piastri will get his first taste of the MCL40 on Thursday, before he and Norris are expected to split the final day of running on Friday.