Norris says McLaren title defense is 'impossible'

Lando Norris says McLaren’s reliability problems have made his Formula 1 title defense “pretty impossible for the time being” just six races into 2026, leaving the reigning world champion sixth in the standings and 98 points behind leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli heading into Barcelona.

The McLaren driver’s season has been repeatedly disrupted by power-unit trouble. The team suffered a double non-start in China because of electrical issues, and Norris then retired from both Canada and Monaco with further problems. Across the first six grands prix, he has failed to reach the chequered flag in half of them, a run that has stopped his campaign from ever building momentum.

Speaking in Barcelona, Norris said the damage goes beyond the points he has lost because the interruptions have also prevented him from developing confidence in the MCL40. “When you keep having things that keep going wrong, you cannot build confidence in the car, you cannot try things,” he said. “All of this is making any title defence pretty impossible for the time being. None of us wants to not finish races. We all want to give ourselves another chance to defend the constructors’ and to defend the drivers’. But for the time being, it’s just impossible.”

That bleak assessment was not the same as conceding the season altogether. Norris insisted McLaren still has enough pace to recover and even win races, pointing to Miami as proof of what the car can do when its weekends stay together. He said he still believes McLaren can win and argued the team should have won there on pure pace. Miami remains McLaren’s strongest weekend of the year, with 48 points from Norris’ sprint win and second place in the grand prix.

Norris also said Miami and Canada showed the team can fight closer to the front if it can string weekends together. But the scale of the challenge is being amplified by the form of Antonelli, who has opened the year at the head of the championship. Norris said McLaren is chasing “a team and driver that’s just dominating, that’s not making mistakes, and that’s getting everything right,” adding that Antonelli is “doing an unbelievable job.”

The reliability trouble could yet make the situation worse. Norris said he is already nearing the end of some of his power-unit allocations and warned that grid penalties may follow if McLaren and Mercedes cannot get on top of the issue. “At some point I’ll start running into having to take penalties and take parts that ideally I wouldn’t be happy to,” he said, a prospect that would deepen the hole in both his own title defense and McLaren’s attempt to stay in touch in the constructors’ fight.