‘It’s crazy’ - Lando Norris urges McLaren to address 2026 F1 consistency

Lando Norris says the McLaren Formula 1 team has to address the “pretty crazy” inconsistency in form relative to Mercedes and make a “more well-rounded” car.

McLaren was competitive in Miami and close to Mercedes in Montreal.

However, the team had a difficult weekend in Monaco that saw both cars on the fourth row in qualifying.

Having lost a place to Pierre Gasly at the start, Lando Norris retired with a power unit issue, while team-mate Oscar Piastri salvaged fourth place - helped by a high attrition rate and penalties for cars ahead.

Despite having PU issues earlier in the race, Norris didn’t have much warning that a retirement was looming.

“Not a lot,” he said when asked by Crash.net.

“Like at the end, it just went pretty much immediately.

“So there were some issues at the beginning, and then more in the middle, and I don't know if they're related or not, but I just got told to retire the car. So not a lot I can do nowadays.

“There was just a lot of stuff I could hear from the engine, the turbo, the battery, a lot of things that don't sound correct.

“We tried to fix it; it made the problem worse. We put it back, so I had the problems again, but seemed to have to live with it, and then in the end it just completely went.”

Having failed to start in China and failed to finish in Canada and Monaco Norris currently lies in sixth place in the world championship, 98 points shy of leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli.

Despite that huge deficit, he believes that he can still be in the fight, citing his Miami form.

“I have to,” he said. “Max came back from that much last year.

“I never want to rule it out, especially so early on in the season, but when you're six-tenths off in qualifying around Monaco, it's hard to find too many positives from that.

“But you just look back to a couple weeks ago in Miami, we fought for a win.

“Probably should have won the race. So the fact we can go from almost winning a race against a Mercedes to being so far off is pretty crazy.

“It shows that the car works quite specifically in certain scenarios, and clearly not in others. So the team needs to understand this. We need to understand how we can develop the car more well-rounded, like the Mercedes is proving to be. For now we just have to keep working, that's all we can do.”

Norris has had a string of Mercedes PU issues this year, having lost most of the FP2 session to one prior to his race retirement. However, he’s not taking it personally.

"Well, I wouldn't say George is having the best season, either, would you?,” he said. “It just seems that's the struggles we have.

“I think Mercedes has had a fair share of issues. Oscar, less than me, and Kimi less than George. That's just the way it is sometimes. Sometimes that's just life, nothing I can do.

“I just go out, I try and do the best I can, and that's all I can really achieve. Problem is, I'm on my third power unit already, anymore, and I'm taking penalties from this point onwards, so hopefully that's not the case.

“I don't know what I should expect nowadays. It seems like every weekend we have something, but it's not just McLaren, it's Mercedes as well. And between HPP and McLaren, we have to do a better job, because it's not good enough at the minute

After a run of street and temporary venues Norris is looking forward to seeing how McLaren’s form plays out in Barcelona, the first of a run of more traditional tracks.

“I think it would be nice to see if we can get some of the pace back that we had in Miami,” he said.

“The same time, I don't understand how we were quick in Montreal, and struggled here. I didn't think we expected to be quick in Montreal. We seemed to be pretty quick, and I seem to get a lot of the car myself.

“Here we just didn't have a chance of doing that at all. So it's still a big difference in tracks between here and Canada, but the fact we could be what, a tenth and a bit off a pole, and now it's six here is pretty insane.

“It'll be good to go back to Barcelona and just see how the car stacks up. I still believe it's shown good signs, it clearly has. We almost won a race, and we should have won a race in Miami.

“So it clearly works in places. We just need to understand why it's so good in certain ones, and so bad in others.”