A month ago, McLaren’s title defence looked dead.
Kimi Antonelli had 204 points on the board for Mercedes heading into the Hungarian Grand Prix. Between them, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri couldn’t even match that total – 103 for Norris, 92 for Piastri. The papaya cars were quick, but not quick enough, and the reigning champion seemed destined to surrender his crown without much of a fight.
Then came Budapest, and with it, a very different McLaren.
Upgrades – and an instant response
McLaren arrived at the Hungaroring with a serious upgrade package: revised front and rear corner bodywork, a new floor, a new rear wing. Not a tweak. A reset.
The impact was brutal and immediate. Norris stuck it on pole and converted on Sunday. One race later at Zandvoort, he did it again – this time with a statement move, sweeping around the outside of Antonelli at Turn 1 to take control of the Dutch Grand Prix.
From nowhere, the gap is now 83 points. Still big. No longer insurmountable.
It would be easy to chalk the turnaround up to pure hardware. New bits on the car, lap time found, story told. Andrea Stella is having none of that.
The McLaren team principal is convinced this surge is as much about the driver as the machine. In his eyes, Norris is not just delivering the car’s potential; he’s brushing up against something beyond it.
“Lando is driving and operating at a very high level, in absolute sense, in relation to a Formula 1 world champion,” Stella said after Zandvoort. “He's driving at the level of a world champion.”
A champion’s level – and still climbing
Stella has watched Norris grow from talented prospect to complete operator, and he sees a clear turning point.
What changed? Not a single magic moment, but a shift in how Norris works and how the team works around him – a model now being mirrored on Piastri’s side of the garage.
“And like I always say for Lando, what I like the most of his journey in Formula 1 is that he keeps improving,” Stella explained. “And especially after the start of the 2025 season, something clicked, which is not only a single click, but is a way of working with Lando, for Lando, and that we are adopting also on Oscar's side now in particular. And this approach has led Lando to continuous improvements.”
That evolution was on display in Zandvoort. This was not a weekend where McLaren could assume they had victory in hand. The sprint performance didn’t suggest dominance. The race demanded graft.
“So it's almost like I see Lando stronger and stronger race by race,” Stella said. “Because this weekend was nowhere near a weekend in which we could fight for the victory for granted, especially after having seen the performance in the sprint.
“But we invested in trying to understand where was the opportunity from a tyre exploitation point of view, and car improvement. Actually, both drivers improved from this point of view, but unfortunately a question mark remains as to the behaviour of the second stint of Oscar.”
That line is telling. McLaren see both drivers on an upward curve, but right now one of them is turning that trajectory into results.
“At the moment Lando is capable of maximising the performance in qualifying trim,” Stella added. “If we think the start of 2025, this had become a bit of a concern that he overcame. And then, when you have conditions in which the car slides in the race, there's not much grip, he is the master in this kind of conditions.”
Saturdays sorted – and Sundays under control
The numbers back Stella up.
In 2025, Norris and Piastri were locked together over one lap. Their qualifying head-to-head – including sprint sessions – ended 15-15. A dead heat.
The new 2026 regulations reset the field and, early on, seemed to tilt against Norris. He trailed 3-1 in qualifying going into the unexpected April break.
Since then, he has flipped the script. From that point, Norris leads Piastri 12-1 on Saturdays, with the Australian only ahead in Monaco. The average gap is slim – 0.128s – but the direction of travel is clear. When it matters, the reigning champion finds that last fraction more often.
The real change, though, isn’t just raw speed. It’s the way Norris is choosing his battles.
Assertiveness without recklessness
Stella believes the decisive step has come in Norris’ mindset and racecraft. The move on Antonelli at Zandvoort – bold, clean, and decisive – was his exhibit A.
“If you want to look at Lando from another angle, I would say that definitely he is now expressing a higher level of assertiveness as he drives,” Stella said. “You know, the manoeuvre to pass Antonelli today is a really good demonstration of that. He's demonstrating more self-confidence.”
Crucially, this isn’t the wild, elbows-out aggression that often marks a young driver trying to prove a point. It’s something more mature.
“This is interesting, and I quite like it – the self-confidence sometimes is not demonstrated by being the most aggressive,” Stella explained. “Sometimes you are self-confident when you think like, 'You know what? I'm not going to have a fight now because I may lose in this fight. It's a very long race. See you at the end of the race.'”
That line could be the motto of Norris’ season so far. He is attacking when the odds are stacked in his favour and walking away when they’re not. No panic. No desperation.
“It's this confidence in your means, in your strength, that I quite like,” Stella continued. “Which means that sometimes you are actually the one backing off when the situation becomes too risky.”
Recent races underline that point. Norris has twice started from pole and twice lost the lead on the opening lap. For a younger version of himself, that might have triggered frustration, overdriving, or radio angst. Not now.
“We need to remember that in the last couple of races that he won, he didn't defend the pole position,” Stella said. “He was actually second at the end of the first lap. But I did not hear or perceive any decay in his confidence, as to the fact that he was fast and he was just preparing his opportunity to then cash in on his competitiveness.”
“So I think assertiveness and confidence are probably the two characteristics that he has improved the most from a non-technical, non-operational point of view.”
The upgrades have given Norris a sharper weapon. His own evolution is turning it into a title threat again.
Antonelli still leads. Mercedes still hold the high ground. But with an 83‑point gap shrinking and a champion driving “at the level of a world champion,” the question is no longer whether McLaren can defend the crown.
It’s how much longer the man in front can keep him behind.
