After qualifying P6 for the 2026 F1 Austrian GP, Lando Norris opened up about McLaren’s ongoing development, confident that the team can unlock more performance with future upgrades.
The Brit has so far had a mixed weekend in Spielberg, missing most of FP1 due to a hydraulic issue, ultimately taking P7 before finishing P3 in FP2 and P5 in FP3. Now, in Qualifying, Norris only managed to secure P6, despite finishing 0.386s behind controversial polesitter George Russell.
Norris on McLaren’s 2026 F1 Austrian GP Qualifying
While Norris will start the 2026 F1 Austrian GP from P6, teammate Oscar Piastri will line up alongside him in P7 after also having a difficult Qualifying session.
Discussing McLaren’s performance, Norris explained that they simply lacked the pace to qualify higher up the grid.
“Copy and paste. You don’t need me now, you don’t need me afterwards,” he jokingly began in the print media pen, pointing to their P6 and P7 results. “I think so, I mean, I feel like everyone was probably expecting more, even us, we were probably expecting a little bit more just from a positions point of view, but we just saw how close it was, and I think my lap felt pretty good.”
With track temperatures reaching 50°C today, he continued: “Similar to what Oscar said, it takes a pretty insane lap on a day like today to maybe get you a couple more positions, but they don’t happen very often, and it’s tricky to get out of in the car we have at the minute. So I think we’re happy to be again as close as we were to some of them, just hope that some of them don’t do a perfect lap and make a couple of mistakes, that just wasn’t the case today, so we are just where we deserve to be.”
The MCL40’s development process
Speaking during media day on Thursday, Norris admitted that McLaren is “two, three months behind” in upgrades, despite already bringing changes in Miami, Monaco, Barcelona, and now in Spielberg. During Friday’s running, Norris ran an experimental rear wing, while his car also carried revised rear brake duct inlets.
When asked about how the team plans to catch up on their development process, Norris shared: “Yeah, good question.
“I mean it just takes a little bit of everything honestly. It just takes a very very strong team. It takes efficiency or performance of the guys and girls back in the factory working hard to find little bits, being efficient with bringing upgrades to the track, more than what we’ve been doing now, because other teams are bringing more than what we are,” he noted, as Red Bull currently brought the largest upgrade package to their home race weekend.
“So, it’s just, every single individual in McLaren needs to do a better job than every other person in Formula 1, and I believe it’s possible, I have very good faith in my team. I just think the fact that we’re so close and we know that there’s so much more potential that we have, it’s a good sign for the future, so I’m still optimistic, we just need to get it going.”
Cost cap speculations
When informed that some drivers, including Fernando Alonso, have questioned the top teams’ development rate under the cost caps, Norris said: “I think the drivers talk too much. They don’t understand what we’re doing, they’re not the accountants, they don’t really know how it works and things.”
The reigning World Champion went on to analyse whether McLaren’s slower process could benefit them in the second half of the season.
“I’m not surprised at all, I think it depends how quickly you’re onto things, it depends how much time you spend per item, time in the winter, all these little things. It’s also efficiency of how you get parts made and get parts done. So I don’t think people can talk about other teams. Every team is doing better than the other team and you have to outperform them in every way possible.”
Norris: “The rear of the car is not where we need to be”
Further reflecting on his P6 Qualifying result, Norris explained that his MCL40’s rear has been the main limitation on the short Red Bull Ring.
“Just rear really, the rear of the car is too unstable, too unpredictable. I think you see that in the slower cars, the unpredictability, the replays, I’ve seen people into turn 1 completely losing the rear,” he said, as drivers have particularly been struggling at Turns 3, 4, 9, and 10.
Notably, during FP2, Norris ran deep at Turn 3 several times before triggering a brief yellow flag after losing control and spinning at the same corner.
“At the minute, it’s just the rear of the car is not where we need to be. We feel like we can quite easily add, on a track like this anyway, front end in the car, especially as it’s quite a high speed, we can easily add front wing and it’s effective at the minute. But we just can’t do anything to add support and stability and confidence by loading up the rear of the car more, so we just have to wait for new parts and better pieces to suck it down more,” he concluded.
