McLaren driver Lando Norris has expressed satisfaction over the level of performance he is delivering in 2026, believing he has driven \u201cbetter than I probably did to this point last year\u201d, when he was pushing for a maiden F1 world title.<\/p>\n
Norris<\/a> recovered from a series of setbacks across the first half of the 2025 season \u2013 including costly Qualifying mistakes and a collision with team mate Oscar Piastri<\/a> \u2013 to ultimately beat the Australian and Red Bull<\/a>\u2019s Max Verstappen<\/a> to the crown.<\/p>\n The Briton had hoped to kick on and defend his title under the new-for-2026 regulations, but rivals Mercedes<\/a> and Ferrari<\/a> have taken the lion\u2019s share of victories so far \u2013 Norris and McLaren<\/a> only recording their first win of the campaign just before the summer break in Hungary.<\/p>\n Speaking in a McLaren mid-season Q&A, Norris took a moment to reflect on his and the team\u2019s efforts up to this point, how he feels he has become a stronger driver since his title triumph, and what\u2019s to come over the second half of the year.<\/p>\n \u201cI think in terms of my driving, and my own performance as a driver, honestly, I\u2019m very happy,\u201d said Norris, who capitalised on McLaren\u2019s updates at the Hungaroring to take pole position and the victory. \u201cI feel like I have been doing a good job of maximising the car\u2019s potential.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve driven better in this half of the season than I probably did to this point last year, to a certain extent, but sadly I\u2019m not leading the championship.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, I want a better car and a car that can give me more chances and give me more results for the performance of driving I feel like I\u2019m getting out of it, but that\u2019s Formula 1.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cAs a team, and with the car, we\u2019re certainly not quite at the level we want to be at, or we were at last season.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have still had some good results, but we also know we\u2019re not where we should be. We\u2019re not happy with that, we\u2019ve been disappointed with our own performance, but we\u2019re working hard to improve.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re starting to see the benefits of that hard work \u2013 our win in Hungary came as a result of strong upgrades to the car \u2013 but we need to keep pushing and keep developing if we\u2019re going to continue to fight for wins.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking ahead to the second half of the season, Norris refused to get carried away by that breakthrough Budapest win, but pointed to McLaren \u201cstill seeing good potential in the car\u201d as cause for optimism.<\/p>\n With 11 rounds down, he sits fifth in the Drivers\u2019 Championship on 128 points, compared to leader Kimi Antonelli<\/a>\u2019s 219, while McLaren are third in the Teams\u2019 Championship<\/a> on 220 points, compared to leaders Mercedes\u2019 379.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing I\u2019ve learned for sure is just to have no expectations of the future and just to work in the present,\u201d Norris added. \u201cI think that\u2019s the way we\u2019ve been doing everything as a team. That\u2019s why we were back on top in Hungary: just working hard on ourselves as individuals and also as a team.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, I\u2019m optimistic for the future and I think we can win more races, but we have good competition and there are still plenty of races I\u2019m not confident in, because the car is not to the standard that it needs to be in certain areas.<\/p>\n \u201cBut I have confidence in the team. I had confidence that we could win a race, and it came a bit sooner than I thought. I have confidence that we can improve in those areas that are not good enough at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren driver Lando Norris has expressed satisfaction over the level of performance he is delivering in 2026, believing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-835358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835358","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=835358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}