Lando Norris admits McLaren are lagging behind two F1 rivals

Lando Norris has admitted McLaren are currently lagging behind Red Bull and Ferrari heading into the 2026 F1 season.

The reigning world champion set the pace on the opening day of the first Bahrain pre-season test, before Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc produced a new benchmark on Thursday.

Red Bull have also impressed their rivals with the performance and reliability of their new power unit, the first F1 engine they have built in-house since entering the world championship in 2005.

Mercedes, who many tipped as the pre-season favourites, have labelled Red Bull as the current “benchmark”, with Toto Wolff claiming they could be as much as one second clear of the field on the straights thanks to their engine deployment.

Norris insists McLaren have ground to make up heading into next week’s second pre-season test in Bahrain.

"We did a good amount of laps, we're certainly not quick enough,” the Briton told Sky Sports F1 at the end of the second day.

"Plenty of work for us to look into and try to improve on.

"I think today was our first bit of understanding on where we stand in terms of pace, against at least Ferrari, who did a full long run.

"We're not really close to them at the minute. We're certainly not bad, but we're not quick enough.

"It's still just testing and we've got plenty of things we know we can already improve on and work on, so nothing to be worried by, but a productive day for the teams and for myself, and that's the most important thing.”

Norris also pointed out the apparent strength of the Red Bull power unit.

"They have a very good power unit by the looks of things," he added. "They deploy and have a lot of efficiency [with their engine energy management].

"We need to understand how they have that. There's always things I can maybe do a little bit, there's some things on the McLaren side we can do a little bit, but also from McLaren, HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains] side, and Mercedes, I think that they know there's certainly areas we need to improve.

"But the Red Bulls seem to have done a very good job, and the Ford powertrain seems to be very strong. Fair play to them. But, at the minute, they're a good step ahead of us.”

McLaren’s technical director for engineering, Neil Houldey, said: "Understanding where to deploy, where to harvest is going to be really important. Making sure that we've got the maximum amount of deployment that we possibly can, which I think is what you're seeing in some of the GPS traces.

"Firstly, you see some teams who are able to deploy more and you also see teams, whether they're from the same or from a different manufacturer, deploying at different times in the lap just as we're starting to learn a little bit more about where those correct deployment areas are.

"I know that Mercedes HPP has worked incredibly hard to get the PU that we've got, and I've no doubt that we'll get the deployment that we need to be competitive this year."

Oscar Piastri is back in action for McLaren on the third and final day of the first test on Friday.