Guenther Steiner makes bold Lando Norris F1 2026 prediction

Former Haas Formula 1 team principal Guenther Steiner has backed Lando Norris to take second place in the 2026 drivers’ world championship. 

Reigning world champion Norris finds himself fourth in the world championship after an impressive run of form from McLaren that has seen the 26-year-old Briton claim two victories and three pole positions in the last four races. 

Norris followed up his first victory of the season in Hungary with a second at the Dutch Grand Prix following the F1 summer break, before going on to finish fourth in Monza and third in Madrid. 

The McLaren driver appeared to be on course for a certain win at the Spanish Grand Prix before an ill-timed virtual safety car saw him miss out on a cheap pit stop that his rivals benefitted from. Norris dropped from a comfortable lead into fifth place, before battling back to the podium.

Norris is 106 points behind championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli but just five behind third-placed Lewis Hamilton, and only 25 adrift of George Russell, who sits second. 

And Steiner reckons Norris will go on to overhaul Russell if he carries his current form across the remaining nine scheduled races this season. 

"He will be second if he continues like this. Look how happy the Lando boy is,” Steiner said on The Red Flags Podcast. 

Despite enduring a difficult start to the 2026 season with McLaren, Norris believes he is operating at a higher level than he did during his title-winning campaign last year. 

Norris described his pole lap at the Madring as being “probably one of the best laps I’ve done ever in my career”.

"One of those laps when everything came together,” he explained. “I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, it was whether it came together but my brain let me do it almost perfect. 

“It's one of those laps when you look at the time and go: 'Oh, that was pretty good."

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was also full of praise for Norris’ performance in Madrid, despite losing victory under circumstances beyond his control.

“It was a consequence of pushing to the level that Lando managed to push to, and when you look at the telemetry, it is the precision, the braking, the speed carried on entry, the striking of the kerb, the going on power,” Stella said of Norris’ pole lap. 

“Everything was executed with a pretty unique level of precision, and for me, the main attribute that would be associated with this lap was just incredible precision in the metre-by-metre execution.

“I think Lando offered one of the best performances of his career.”