Drivers of…power units
Even in China, ahead of the second weekend of this revolutionary F1 season, one of the main topics in drivers’ press conferences continues to be the pros and especially the cons of the new technical regulations. Now even the reigning world champion, Lando Norris, seems to be counted among the critics. However, this time the McLaren driver was less blunt than he was in Australia when he referred to these cars as “the worst ever.” This time, Lando focused on explaining how these cars are actually driven—or more precisely, how it’s no longer the car itself but the power unit that you drive.
“How do I feel about this car? It’s still very early to say,” commented the #1 McLaren driver to journalists in China. “It’s quite different because you don’t drive the cars in the same way anymore; you drive the power unit. You no longer drive the car at the limit. You don’t take a driver and tell them to drive the car as fast as possible: it doesn’t work like that. So, you need a very different driving style. Essentially, you forget everything you’ve done before and start from scratch. I’m still trying to figure out how to drive the car and the power unit and how to bring it all together.”
No more Pouhon challenges
For this reason, certain ‘challenges’ drivers once faced on iconic corners—like attempting to take Pouhon flat out at Spa—unfortunately no longer exist: “I think you can still make a difference as a driver by managing the power unit correctly, but not necessarily by driving the car in a much better way. I don’t think anyone goes to Pouhon now to see who has the biggest balls. That’s not what will happen. You’ll only see who can lift the car at the right point and use the correct throttle without wasting power, without draining the battery, and things like that. So the driver can still make a difference by pushing the power unit to its limits,” explained the Englishman. “But it’s a completely different style from simply saying ‘let’s see who can carry the maximum speed through Pouhon.’ It depends more on the needs of the power unit.”
Performance expectations
Regarding performance, Lando Norris remains optimistic that McLaren can at least partially close the gap to Mercedes seen in Melbourne: “I expect the gaps to be a little closer,” said Norris. “I think Melbourne was one of the most difficult tracks of the season in terms of lift-and-coast and similar factors. Here, that aspect should be less significant, so we expect to be closer. But even if we went back to Melbourne now, I think we would still expect a smaller gap due to what we’ve understood and learned. At the same time, we also know we need to improve in all areas, not just with the power unit. The car itself is decent, we’re in a good starting position, but we still want to improve. So there are two aspects to address: improving the car, which will take more time, and the power unit, where we expect to be closer to matching Mercedes’ performance.”
Lando Norris’s comments highlight a fundamental shift in the 2026 era, where the “art” of driving is being rewritten as a digital exercise in energy efficiency. As the grid prepares for the massive back straight in Shanghai, the focus won’t be on who can brake latest into the hairpin, but who has harvested enough MGU-K energy to defend their position. For McLaren, the goal in the Chinese Grand Prix is to prove that they have mastered this new language of racing. If Norris can find the harmony between the chassis and the powertrain that he felt was missing in Australia, the fight for the title could become a lot more interesting. The era of the “power unit pilot” has officially arrived.
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