Lando Norris left Monaco with another frustrating weekend on the scoreboard, but a clearer message in his voice: McLaren’s biggest fight right now is not just speed, but consistency.
After a difficult qualifying left both McLarens stranded on the fourth row, Norris’ race unraveled early. A loss of position at the start, followed by a power unit failure that escalated lap by lap, eventually forced the reigning world champion into retirement – adding to a growing run of misfortune in a season that has yet to fully ignite.
Still, the Briton insists the bigger picture is more complicated than a single setback.
‘Pretty crazy’ swings in McLaren form
Norris pointed to McLaren’s fluctuating performance across different circuits as the key concern, highlighting how the car can jump from race-winning potential to midfield struggle within weeks.
“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,” he noted.
©McLaren
“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.”
It is that inconsistency – rather than outright pace – that Norris believes is holding McLaren back from sustaining a title challenge.
Power unit pain and mounting frustration
Norris’ Monaco retirement was triggered by a power unit issue that escalated quickly, leaving him little time to react.
“Not a lot,” he said. “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.”
Norris has now endured a string of costly setbacks this season, but he refused to single out McLaren or Mercedes power unit issues as the sole problem.
“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.”
Still believing in a title fight
Despite sitting sixth in the championship, 98 points off the leader, Norris refuses to concede the season. He’s keeping the faith.
“I have to,” he said. “Max came back from that much last year. “I never want to rule it out. I think it would be nice to see if we can get some of the pace back that we had in Miami.
“At 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.”
For Norris, the path forward is clear: not reinvention, but understanding.
Read also:
Norris: Monaco qualifying ‘a reality check’ for struggling McLaren
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