McLaren car “may well” be slower if adapted to Norris’s driving style

Lando Norris seemed to roll a grenade under the door during a press conference ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix when he said he had effectively given up persuading his McLaren team to design a car which suits his preferred attacking style.

Since the MCL39 was the benchmark car at the season opener – Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri would likely have finished 1-2 had Piastri not spun – this might sound counter-intuitive, but Norris added important context.

The championship leader likes to be aggressive under braking and on corner entries, which requires the car to have a front end willing to cope with a driver taking such liberties. Norris described the MCL39 as ‘pretty weak’ in those areas and said he had adjusted his style to suit – and that seemed to be the case last weekend in Melbourne, where our GPS analysis suggested he was asking less of the car on the brakes and focusing more on exit speed.

Neil Houldey, technical director of engineering at McLaren, suggests that Norris’s feeling is closely linked to the choice for pure performance with the new car.

“I think, like [Norris] said, he stopped asking for what he likes and we’ve produced a faster car,” he said, when asked by Autosport to clarify Norris’s comments. “We just try and generate the fastest car that we possibly can, and he is good enough to manage that and change his driving style to suit.

“If we focused on trying to make the car work for his driving style, then we may well end up with a slower car. I think so far it looks like we’ve taken the right route. Luckily Lando is awesome enough to cope with that and to find a fast way of driving it.”

As the current ground effect ruleset matures, teams are finding it harder to unlock more performance from their cars without inducing bothersome quirks. The underfloor is the hardest-working element in terms of downforce creation, but to maximise its potential it has to run close to the track surface – and maintain a steady position despite braking, acceleration and cornering forces, and bumps.

This is a difficult balancing act to accomplish. Many of the teams which have pushed hardest to achieve peak downforce have found small floor movements cause vicious changes in balance through corners: super-hard braking naturally induces dive, where the rear of the car rises as the weight transfers to the front axle.

McLaren CEO Zak Brown underlined the choice for pure performance over the past winter, but still wants to make the MCL39 a bit ‘more compliant’ before the design team pivots fully towards the 2026 car project.

“I think you’re always trying to make the car a little bit easier for the drivers,” he said in China. “Someone said to me yesterday it didn’t look like we put a lap time down in Bahrain testing – we tried, we just didn’t put one down. So I think we need to make the car a little bit more compliant. 

“It’s clearly very quick, but when you get it up on its nose, so to speak, and you’re flinging it around at ten-tenths, then yes, the drivers want to make it a little bit more compliant.”

Zak Brown, McLaren

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

In doing so, McLaren has to strike a balance between improving the feeling for its drivers and not giving up pure potential.

“We have some innovations on the car that give it a different feel, so clearly Lando did adapt to it pretty well in Australia,” Brown added. “We are trying to get it more compliant, but we certainly don’t want to make it slower.”

Brown thinks the solution is partly in the experience that the drivers will gain with the 2025 car, as the McLaren CEO feels his drivers will get more comfortable with the ‘tricky’ McLaren as the season progresses.

“Keep in mind that in testing you only have three days, and the drivers split it,” he said. “Then in Australia you had tricky conditions in the race. I’m sure he’s still getting used to it.”