Lando Norris hits out at ‘too many questions’ about McLaren’s F1 car

Lando Norris has taken aim at the media for asking “too many questions” about the competitiveness of his McLaren F1 car.

Norris and his McLaren team had already been labelled as the pre-season title favourites before he impressively won a chaotic, rain-hit season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

That performance came after McLaren dominated qualifying in Melbourne with Norris claiming pole position and teammate Oscar Piastri completing a front-row lockout.

While the team could not translate that result into a one-two on Sunday, with Piastri spinning off late on, Norris mastered the treacherous conditions to fend off Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and make the perfect start to a season he intends to end as world champion.

After qualifying, Mercedes’ George Russell suggested McLaren are so far ahead of their rivals that they could already switch their development focus onto 2026 and still win this year’s titles.

And Norris appeared to be irked about the amount of questions he has had to field relating to the strong performance of his MCL39 challenger when he spoke in the TV pen following his victory.

“I don’t know why people always talk about the car so much,” Norris, who had pulled 16 seconds clear of Verstappen before the final Safety Car intervention, told Sky Italia.

“Too many questions in the media are about just the car. Me and Oscar drove very, very well yesterday. I’m not saying others didn’t, but others should not have been as far off as they were. That was clear.

“But I think we do, by a little margin, have the best car. I’m not denying that. But not everything is about the car and that’s clear.

“Today was a deserved win I think because we made good decisions as a team and in the past, like last year, we would have done the same race but we wouldn’t have won the race because we were not the best at making those decisions.

“Today we were, so I give a lot of credit to the team, because they worked hard over the winter to make sure they were ready for a day like today.”

Brilliant Lando Norris drive lauded

Norris’s fifth career win sees him take the lead of the F1 drivers’ world championship for the first time in his career.

It also ends Verstappen’s 63-race streak at the head of the championship standings which dated back to mid-2022.

"That's one of the great all-time drives from Lando Norris there,” Martin Brundle said during Sky Sports F1’s coverage.

"In the most challenging conditions, with the restarts and so much pressure."

McLaren CEO Zak Brown described Norris’s drive as “unbelievable”.