![\"McLaren's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/XPB_1414101_HiRes.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMcLaren\u2019s lack of pace at the Monaco Grand Prix should serve as a \u201creality check\u201d, according to Lando Norris – but why has McLaren struggled so much at a race it won last year?\u00a0<\/p>\n
McLaren\u2019s place in the pecking order has swung from track to track, but it was a victory contender at Suzuka, won the Miami sprint race and scooped second amid the Mercedes drivers tangling in the Montreal sprint.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Sunday in Monaco will be a case of damage limitation, with its drivers Oscar Piastri and Norris seventh and eighth in qualifying, over half a second off the pace.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re just lacking grip compared to the others,\u201d Piastri told media including The Race, after qualifying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCompared to yesterday, the car actually felt a pretty decent step nicer to drive, which is good but also bad when you’re still as far off as we are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have got a bit closer, things feel a bit nicer, but when you are lacking grip, unfortunately, there’s not too many levers you can pull to make up for it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Piastri admitted his wall touch at Rascasse on his first lap of Q3 was because \u201cyou’ve got to find a fair bit of time to even stand a chance of being with the others, [so] mistakes and then wild moments are going to happen.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Norris called Monaco a \u201creality check\u201d of how far off the pace the 2026 McLaren truly is.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m the one driving the car, so I can tell the difficulty of extracting laptime, how difficult it was already last weekend in Montreal,\u201d Norris said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s why I was so surprised last weekend to be as competitive as we were. Coming here… it\u2019s not an eye-opener, but still a slight reality check of how far off we are.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, when you look at where we’ve been good,\u00a0 it’s still been not, crazy slow speed tracks, where it was Suzuka, Miami\u2026 and into Montreal, my expectations were not high.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you ask me coming into Monaco, I think I said it probably last weekend, I didn\u2019t have high hopes into this weekend. The car is just very difficult to drive, not very compliant, not very forgiving in any way. My confidence level last year was 100, now it’s 85 and around Monaco you need to be around 100.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Norris put this down to McLaren\u2019s grip and downforce deficiency.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got the tyres to work in the end, we were struggling yesterday, I think we got it in a better window but…When you have less grip and less downforce, it’s a bigger struggle to get everything to work,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo maybe comparing to others, yes [we didn\u2019t get the front tyres working as well], but the big thing is we just don’t have the grip, we don’t have the load, the car doesn’t perform as well as it needs to and it’s as simple as that.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Team boss Andrea Stella named the McLaren MCL40 being gentle on its tyres as one of two reasons why McLaren had low expectations for Monaco, along with the \u201cclear objective\u201d of addressing the aerodynamic load deficit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe MCL40, partly by design, and partly because we want to improve this factor as well, it’s very gentle on the tyres, and when you have events where you actually have to be good at introducing energy and heat in the tyres, then we struggle a bit,\u201d Stella explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, it was not an easy task to find the right window for the tyres. We needed to work the tyres in the preparation lap in a certain manner, and still we know that, especially in the initial part of a lap, we seem to be losing time compared to some other people.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, in Monaco, these two factors, overall grip and load, and the second one, the way you work the tyres, are very essential.\u201d<\/p>\n
More was possible?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stella felt McLaren could have been on the third row as the team made \u201csignificant steps\u201d forward with the set-up overnight, having started \u201con the backfoot\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThat progression was clear in Q1 and Q2, where the car appeared to be much more competitive, relatively,\u201d Stella said with Norris fourth in Q1 and fifth in Q2.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, we didn\u2019t quite manage to put it all together in Q3. Lando was on a very strong final lap and was up by a couple of tenths, but a lock-up at the chicane meant we left some performance on the table. As a result, we will lock out the fourth row for tomorrow’s race.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear this specific circuit configuration doesn’t entirely suit our car’s characteristics, and we have work to do to improve in these conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norris put that error at the Nouvelle chicane to \u201cpushing a bit too much trying to find three tenths and locked up\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Had Norris pieced his best qualifying sectors together, he\u2019d have found 0.262s, which would have put him ahead of Piastri but still only seventh. However, you\u2019d expect that without the last lap mistake, Norris could have gone on to improve his sectors and potentially pipped Isack Hadjar\u2019s Red Bull or George Russell\u2019s Mercedes.<\/p>\n
But instead, McLaren is facing a tough Sunday from seventh and eighth on the grid and is relying on opportunities to \u201crepay the team\u2019s hard work\u201d in breaking the curfew to work until 4am on Saturday to repair and strengthen Norris\u2019s car after his practice stoppage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren\u2019s lack of pace at the Monaco Grand Prix should serve as a \u201creality check\u201d, according to Lando…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719631,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-719630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}