Norris doesn’t see an unfair advantage in Mercedes PU

Lando Norris says McLaren is confident that Mercedes is not breaking any rules by retaining more knowledge about how to operate its power unit at the start of the 2026 season.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella was vocal about the deficit to Mercedes that was seen at the first race of the season in Melbourne, highlighting how a lack of knowledge about how to operate the power unit was hurting McLaren’s potential. Norris says it is only experience rather than software that McLaren is trying to catch-up on at this stage of the year, but that it has a big impact on relative performance.

“I think we get everything that we want [from Mercedes],” Norris said. "I certainly don't think there's any of that. I think we're very happy, we’re just delayed on all of these processes and therefore not being able to be as prepared as what we want to be. It's as simple as that.

“We're playing catch up at round one rather than saying, ‘We feel like we've nailed everything. Why is there still a gap?’ There's a big gap and we're figuring out things along the way – which is too late in the world of Formula 1.

“No, it's none of that stuff [Mercedes not providing everything it has to]. It’s just when you're in the world of preparation, when you don't feel prepared and you're finding out things along the way, that's just not the position you want to be in.”

Norris says the main request from McLaren is to be able to be more prepared based on Mercedes’ understanding of the power unit, although he expects to be closer to the works team at this weekend’s Chinese Grand Prix.

“We've worked very closely ever since and they've helped us achieve the last couple of world championships together. So it's certainly not like that's not the case already," he said. "It's just early on in the season, there's just a lot of things to try and figure out and understand. It's just that it's not told, let's say…

“Certain things don't need to be told because you always try and create your own advantages, but at the same time, there are certain things that we are having to figure out for ourselves.

“I don't know what the rules are and what has to be said or not, and those kind of things – that’s down to Andrea and the rest of the team – but we've always worked closely. We'll continue to do it.

“As much as he said some of these things, there were still a lot of things that we just didn't explore and maximize ourselves. That's kind of irrelevant at the same time – if we just do a better job ourselves and maximized it and figure it out more earlier, we would just do better anyway.

“But the fact that we didn't have the newer power unit at an earlier point meant that we're always going to be on the back foot compared to a team that's performing extremely well, that’s a lot more prepared than we are able to be. I guess we just want to be able to be more prepared and that's the main thing we've asked for.”