Lando Norris did not mince words. Ahead of the São Paulo Grand Prix, the reigning world champion described his McLaren MCL40 as “horrible” to drive, and he openly questioned whether the team’s latest upgrade package would do anything to fix the problem. “I don’t think it will make it any easier [to drive],” Norris said. “Maybe there’s a chance it makes it harder”.
The honesty is brutal, but it is also revealing. Norris is not simply venting frustration. He is diagnosing a fundamental truth about McLaren’s 2026 season: the team is bringing upgrades, but they are upgrades for performance, not for drivability. And in a year where the MCL40 has been on a knife-edge from the very first race, that distinction may be the difference between salvaging the season and watching it slip away.
What McLaren Is Actually Bringing to Interlagos
The São Paulo upgrade package is substantial. McLaren has revised front and rear wings and introduced new floor components, all aimed at adding raw downforce and lap time. Reserve driver Leonardo Fornaroli will take Oscar Piastri’s car in FP1 to evaluate the new parts, while Norris runs the other MCL40 from the opening session.
Norris is not dismissing the upgrades. He acknowledges that “the car has got better every time we brought upgrades”. The problem is not that the parts are bad. The problem is that they are not solving the right problem.
“The upgrades are just to add performance,” Norris explained. “I give my feedback, I say what I want, what’s difficult. The engineers and aerodynamicists are the clever ones who turn my comments into lap time”. The implication is clear: the engineers are chasing lap time, but Norris is begging for a car that he can actually drive consistently.
The Root Cause: A “Knife-Edge” Car That Never Left
To understand Norris’s frustration, you have to understand the MCL40’s fundamental flaw. The car has been on a knife-edge in every single corner all season. Norris described the experience in Singapore with almost physical exhaustion:
“You’ve got to drive it within an exact percent, and you have to force the car in every single way… You’ve got to drive it in a way that takes so much concentration and so much ability. It’s just full-on and mentally draining because of how hard you have to work behind the wheel”.
The specific weakness is slow-corner performance, and it is not merely an aerodynamic problem. It is a mechanical and geometric problem. The MCL40 runs a high degree of anti-squat and anti-dive suspension geometry, which stabilises the aerodynamic platform but smothers the transmission of feel about grip at each axle. Norris’s driving style depends on that feel—his strength is sensing where the front tyres pick up lateral grip mid-corner and using it to rotate the car. Without it, he cannot trust either end of the car.
McLaren has been working on revised suspension geometry and a different aerodynamic philosophy to address this. But the Interlagos package, according to Norris, is not that fix. It is a performance package layered on top of a car that remains fundamentally difficult to drive.
The Championship Reality: Fighting for Third, Not First
The context makes Norris’s frustration even sharper. McLaren are fourth in the Constructors’ Championship with 365 points, 17 points behind Red Bull in third. Mercedes lead with 630 points and can clinch the title this weekend. Norris himself sits sixth in the Drivers’ Championship, unable to mount a serious defence of the crown he won in 2025.
There was a moment when it looked like McLaren had turned the corner. Norris won back-to-back races in Budapest and Zandvoort after a major upgrade package at the Hungarian Grand Prix. For a brief stretch, the MCL40 looked like a contender. But since Norris took pole in Madrid, McLaren have been outdeveloped by Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari. The “purple patch” was just that—a patch, not a renaissance.
Norris is honest about the gap. “We’re just a step behind,” he said after practice in Austin. He believes McLaren now have the fourth-fastest car, and the results back him up: a distant fifth in Austin, 30 seconds behind race winner Kimi Antonelli.
Can the Upgrades Save the Season?
The honest answer is: they can help, but they cannot fix the fundamental problem.
The Interlagos package is the first part of McLaren’s final development push for 2026, with more parts expected in Las Vegas. Team principal Andrea Stella hopes these updates will allow McLaren to “be consistently in the fight for podiums and hopefully start to lean on the level of competitiveness that is required to fight for the victory”. That is the ambition. The reality is more modest.
The upgrades may add performance. They may help McLaren hold onto third in the Constructors’ Championship against a resurgent Red Bull. They may even produce a podium if the Interlagos weather—with a high chance of rain forecast—throws the order into chaos. But they will not turn the MCL40 into an easy car to drive, because that requires a fundamental change to the car’s suspension geometry and aerodynamic balance, not a bolt-on performance part.
Norris knows this. That is why his language is so careful. He is not saying the upgrades are useless. He is saying they are not the solution he needs. “You hope that you put something on and it’s magical,” he said. “But Ferrari brought upgrades, and other teams are still bringing upgrades. So they’re delivering. It’s just not really in all the places that we need them to”.
Lando Norris’s “horrible”
verdict is not a meltdown. It is a precise, frustrated diagnosis of a car that has been fundamentally difficult to drive all season, and an upgrade package that addresses performance without addressing the root cause. McLaren are fighting for third in the Constructors’ Championship, not for victories, and the Interlagos parts are unlikely to change that trajectory.
The upgrades might make the MCL40 faster. They might even make it good enough for a podium in the chaos of Interlagos. But they will not make it easy to drive. And until McLaren fixes the knife-edge that has defined their 2026 season, Norris’s frustration will remain justified—no matter how many new wings and floors they bolt onto the car.
