Lando Norris names McLaren’s biggest F1 rivals at Chinese GP

Lando Norris has named Red Bull and Ferrari as the two teams he expects to be McLaren’s biggest rivals at this weekend’s F1 Chinese Grand Prix.

The 25-year-old Briton kicked off his 2025 title bid in perfect fashion by converting pole position into victory at last weekend’s season opener in Australia to take the lead of the F1 world championship for the first time ever.

Norris had to fend off Max Verstappen’s late-charging Red Bull to seal the win in a chaotic wet race as McLaren backed up their pre-season billing as title favourites.

But Norris is expecting both Red Bull and Ferrari to be more competitive at the second round of the season in China.

"I mean, I'm hoping we can do better, and I'm hoping it can be a bit easier,” Norris said on Thursday in Shanghai.

“I think we had a great race, you know, our gap to our competitors halfway through the race was 15 seconds or something.

"So yeah, more likely that there was some safety cars that kind of brought them back into the the race, but we're hopeful.

“It's another race, it's a different weekend, so I wouldn't say we're confident that things are gonna be exactly like they were, and I expect to get a bit more competition from Ferrari this weekend and we saw how quick Red Bull have been, so, clearly they're not out of it.

"They're just as fast. I think when things are perfect like they were in qualifying, we have an advantage, but they're certainly not far behind.”

Lando Norris surprised by gap to Ferrari

Ferrari endured a hugely disappointing start to the season, with Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton only able to finish eighth and 10th after a strategy gamble backfired.

Leclerc and Hamilton were also well off the pace in qualifying, languishing some eight tenths of a second behind the dominant McLaren pair who locked -out the front row of the Melbourne grid.

Norris said he expected Ferrari to be much closer than they were in Australia.

“Definitely the gap we had in qualifying I was a bit surprised by,” he said.

“We expected to be pole and to be quickest, and we expected to kind of be there. But we expected Ferrari to be a good chunk quicker than they were.

“I think they ended up seven, eight tenths off. They are not seven, eight tenths off by any means. There’s not been one session, FP1, FP2, FP3, that they’ve even looked that far off. All of their race runs were a lot closer to us than anyone else.

“In fact I think Ferrari’s race pace on the Friday was even better than ours. We were probably a bit surprised. I’m sure they were a bit shocked to be so far off, I don’t know why.

“It just shows how difficult it is. It’s so easy for it to be going well and for it to just turn upside down and not. Then you saw how quick Max was at the end, even at the beginning of the race, and the last six or seven laps, Max was just as quick as us.

“But definitely in that period where you have to understand the tyres and know how much to push. You want a well balanced car in those kind of drying out conditions so the tyres kind of die away evenly, rather than more front or rear limited. That’s when we seem very, very strong.”