Norris admits McLaren ‘need to improve the car quite a lot’ as he reflects on P5 finish in Australia

Lando Norris has suggested that McLaren “need to improve the car quite a lot” following his P5 finish in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with the Briton admitting that he was “struggling with a lot of things” during the race.

After team mate Oscar Piastri spun off the track on his way to the grid, Norris was the papaya squad’s sole runner in the race. Starting from P6 on the grid, the reigning World Champion kept himself within the top-10 battle but could not match the pace of the leading Mercedes and Ferrari cars.

Despite facing pressure from a chasing Max Verstappen in the latter stages, Norris held onto fifth place at the chequered flag and later admitted that his afternoon in Melbourne had been challenging.

“[It was] tough, of course, trying to learn on the go and understand things – difficult, not an easy thing to try and understand and to maximise,” the 26-year-old explained. “But I think we learned through the race – we clearly did because at the beginning of the race we were pretty slow.

“At the end of the race we were, I think, a little bit better and a bit more competitive, but comparing to Max, comparing to the cars ahead, not even close. We have a lot of things to look into, to try and understand, and I think we have to understand the power unit more, but that’s what today was for and we’ll see what we can learn for next week.

“But it’s clear today that we also need to improve the car quite a lot – to be honest I would say it’s more about the car than just the power unit, but I need to go and look at the data and understand things a little bit more.

“It was difficult with the car and I was struggling with a lot of things. We’ll look at stuff and see what we can improve.”

While there were difficulties for McLaren during the first race weekend of 2026, Norris acknowledged that there is still a chance for the squad to catch up with their rivals in the campaign ahead.

“There’s a lot of time,” the British driver said. “I guess after the last few years it just hurts a little bit more, but I’m happy for George [Russell] – he’s done a good job. Also Mercedes and Ferrari, they’re doing a good job, they’re doing better than we have.

“We need to learn, we need to understand quickly, but it does take time sadly – even though things are quick, it takes time and we’ll do the best we can.”