Lando Norris’s victory at Zandvoort with the McLaren MCL40 has breathed new life into the team’s pursuit of Mercedes in the 2026 Formula 1 title race. McLaren has developed exceptional aerodynamic performance through high-speed corners, but a lack of low-speed grip remains an important weakness. The major upgrade package expected at Baku could therefore become a decisive technical turning point in its attempt to close the gap and fight for the championship.
Lando Norris has every reason to believe that challenge is still possible. He currently sits fourth in the Formula 1 drivers’ standings, 83 points away from the championship lead, but his Zandvoort triumph made him the only non-Mercedes driver to have won more than one Grand Prix during the 2026 season.
Lando Norris strengthens McLaren’s F1 title challenge
There is another significant point when comparing McLaren with Ferrari. Ferrari’s two victories – Lewis Hamilton in Barcelona and Charles Leclerc at Silverstone – came through races in which problems, mistakes or strategic circumstances played a role. McLaren, by contrast, won at Zandvoort by demonstrating superior race pace on track.
After the race, Lando Norris assessed McLaren’s current form and outlined what the Woking team still needs to do to completely eliminate the deficit to Mercedes. His confidence is growing, but so is his awareness of the MCL40’s limitations.
With considerable pragmatism, Lando Norris acknowledged that the McLaren is not yet the outright benchmark across every type of circuit. The competitive order can change substantially depending on the characteristics of each track. Nevertheless, there is every reason for McLaren to keep believing: a Formula 1 championship must be fought until the end, and the possibility of closing back in on Kimi Antonelli remains alive.
Norris has already made clear that McLaren’s low-speed weakness is the biggest obstacle preventing the MCL40 from becoming a consistently dominant package.
Where the McLaren MCL40 gains its advantage
From a technical perspective, the MCL40’s greatest strength is its remarkable stability through high-speed corners, where a car requires substantial aerodynamic downforce to remain firmly planted on the track.
That characteristic allows the McLaren to carry extremely high cornering speeds. The British car was designed around this strength, and the latest developments introduced in Budapest and Zandvoort have produced another impressive leap forward. The work carried out by the technical group led by Rob Marshall has delivered significant results.
McLaren’s Zandvoort package included further development around the rear of the car, with the team introducing MCL40 rear-end upgrades for the Dutch Grand Prix. Additional detail around the car also contributed to its progress, including new front wheel rims used at Zandvoort.
The MCL40’s aerodynamic performance is particularly striking because McLaren has by far the shortest wheelbase on the Formula 1 grid. A shorter wheelbase means fewer centimetres are available for developing the floor, a limitation that would normally create a slight disadvantage in terms of downforce generation. McLaren’s engineers have managed to overcome that obstacle extremely effectively.
McLaren must improve low-speed grip to fight Mercedes
To become a regular contender for victory on every circuit, however, McLaren needs another decisive step: increasing grip at low speeds.
“We have a strong car in certain areas, and one of those is the high-speed corners. But it’s not like 2025, when we had a good car pretty much everywhere. The advantage Mercedes has over us in the slow corners is equally incredible,” Lando Norris explained.
Ferrari had previously represented the technical benchmark in this area, although its own cornering advantage is now beginning to fade. The Maranello team has continued developing the SF-26, including a revised floor introduced at Zandvoort, as it attempts to remain involved in the championship fight.
McLaren’s problem is a shortage of mechanical grip. The conventional response would involve changes to the suspension kinematics, but the dynamic balance involved is extremely delicate.
Simply softening the car to generate more mechanical grip is not enough, because such a change could compromise aerodynamic load generation. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out that a significant part of the problem is aerodynamic rather than purely mechanical.
Front wing compromise remains a problem for McLaren
Optimising the front wing has been a difficult task throughout the season. Even with the previous generation of Formula 1 cars, McLaren worked to improve its front-wing designs in an effort to extract more downforce at lower speeds.
The fundamental difficulty lies in finding the correct compromise between high-speed performance and efficiency through slower corners. Despite several updates to this area, McLaren does not yet appear to have completely solved the problem.
That balance is especially important because improving one area risks weakening what has become the MCL40’s defining strength. McLaren cannot afford to sacrifice its exceptional high-speed performance simply to gain mechanical grip in tight sections.
Baku upgrades could decide McLaren’s championship hopes
Lando Norris concluded his assessment with a candid admission: “At the moment I don’t have the car to fight for the world championship, but things could change soon.”
Expectations are therefore focused heavily on the upgrade package scheduled for Baku. The developments are expected to address precisely the area in which McLaren currently struggles. If they succeed, the team could take another important step towards Mercedes; if they do not, its championship ambitions could become increasingly difficult to sustain.
The recent development trajectory nevertheless provides encouragement. McLaren’s current upgrades have already transformed the competitiveness of the MCL40, although the team knows that different circuits will provide very different tests. Indeed, the existing package has been identified as facing a particularly revealing test at Monza before the next major development step arrives.
For McLaren, the equation is now clear. The MCL40 already possesses the high-speed aerodynamic performance required to beat Mercedes under the right conditions. If the Woking engineers can add the missing low-speed grip without compromising that strength, Lando Norris’s late push for the 2026 Formula 1 championship could become far more than an ambitious target.
