{"id":873569,"date":"2026-08-27T17:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/873569\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T17:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T17:30:11","slug":"mercedes-have-got-a-problem-if-mclaren-form-continues-says-alex-brundle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/873569\/","title":{"rendered":"Mercedes ‘have got a problem’ if McLaren form continues, says Alex Brundle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Brundle has warned that Mercedes<\/a> could have a major “problem on their hands” if McLaren<\/a> carries its race-winning Dutch Grand Prix form into Monza\u00a0and beyond.<\/p>\n

Lando Norris<\/a> secured his second consecutive victory of the 2026 Formula 1 season at Zandvoort. Armed with recent car upgrades, the McLaren driver overcame a chaotic race to beat the Mercedes drivers, Kimi Antonelli and George Russell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The 2025 champion managed to extend his lead and win with a gap of 11.5 seconds over Antonelli.<\/p>\n

Brundle argued that the characteristics of upcoming circuits will be a true test of whether McLaren’s performance step is a threat to Mercedes throughout the rest of the season.<\/p>\n

“You’ve got to say, though, we’re coming off a pair of circuits that are less energetically starved in the way that we saw Mercedes dominate at\u00a0Silverstone and be really strong at Spa,” Brundle told F1 TV.<\/p>\n

“There are going to be those circuits coming, and that effect hasn’t gone away. It’s going to be interesting to see how this McLaren form, for example, rolls on into Monza. If it’s the same there, then I think Mercedes have\u00a0got a problem on their hands.”<\/p>\n

Former F1 driver Jolyon Palmer<\/a> believes that the Brackley outfit will not be overly concerned about Norris’s late title bid, given the upgrade package expected for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes, George Russell, Mercedes, Lando Norris, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Michael Potts \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“Inevitably, the field was going to close up from Melbourne, and it has done with Ferrari<\/a>, with McLaren, with Red Bull as well bringing upgrades,” Palmer explained.<\/p>\n

“Mercedes hit back, didn’t they, in Canada where they moved again further away from the field. That was their only real big hit of upgrades. So, I’m hearing Baku is going to be their big chance.<\/p>\n

“Obviously, Monza is such an outlier of a circuit that might suit them. Then we go to Madrid, which is a complete unknown for everybody. So, Baku is the one that they’ve targeted.<\/p>\n

“I don’t think they’re going to be losing sleep over Lando right now. He seems like he’s too far away. And when you look at Kimi still putting in the performances very consistently, I would say it’s such a long shot for Norris.<\/p>\n

“But for me, I think you could argue he’s the driver of the season. He’s put in so many top, top drives and now he has the car that he didn’t have earlier on, and he’s just smashing out the wins.”<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alex Brundle has warned that Mercedes could have a major “problem on their hands” if McLaren carries its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,48037,578,576,577,590,1881,303284,303285,82,4962,59857],"class_list":["post-873569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dutch-gp","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-mclaren","tag-mercedes","tag-mercedes-have-got-a-problem-if-mclaren-form-continues","tag-says-alex-brundle","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam","tag-zandvoort"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=873569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}