Lando Norris has admitted McLaren are heading into the new season in a competitive position, but does not believe they have increased their advantage over the winter.
Several of McLaren’s rivals have named them as pre-season favourites after they posted a series of impressive lap times over long runs in testing two weeks ago. Norris conceded the reigning constructors’ champions “have a good car to start the season” but doesn’t believe they have pulled further ahead of the pack.“I don’t think in any way we’re superior to any of our main competitors,” he said. “There’s obviously been a lot of chat of that and a lot of things said over the past couple of weeks but I really don’t think we’re any further ahead of competitors than we were last season, or that people think we are.”
McLaren had the second-fastest car on average in terms of single-lap pace last year, but was only narrowly beaten by Red Bull. They set the quickest lap time at eight of the dozen rounds which comprised the second half of last year.
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Norris, who won the final race of last season, expects a close fight from the start of this year. “It’s going to be a tough weekend for us and we’re going to be fighting everyone,” he said.
“But I think we’re in a good position to start off in a strong way and in a confident way. That’s what we want to be and that’s how we want to start the season.”
Mercedes’ George Russell believes McLaren are “absolutely dominant” at the moment while Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc also said their rivals had the upper hand in testing.
New Red Bull driver Liam Lawson doubts they have the pace to challenge McLaren this weekend. “From where we saw McLaren in testing, we are not quick enough to fight them, we feel,” he said.
“But obviously you don’t fully know until you drive on a circuit and obviously Bahrain’s very different to here, so we’ll have a clear indication after tomorrow of more or less where we are competitive compared to the others.
“I do believe we’ve improved the car, obviously for me it’s a big improvement and it’s something that for me is good to drive. But obviously Max [Verstappen] has a very good idea of exactly where we were over the last couple of years to where we are now. ”
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2025 Australian Grand Prix
- Contact with team mate may have led to Bortoleto’s Australian GP crash
- Hamilton dismisses ‘negativity’ over his radio calls. ‘Other drivers are almost abusive’
- Antonelli “got really scared” when he made “big save” on first lap of Australian GP
- Williams explain role played by car’s systems in Sainz’s race-ending crash
- Norris is only driver besides Verstappen to win back-to-back races since 2021
Ian Haycox
13th March 2025, 9:06
Four articles in a row of teams playing down their own performance while saying everyone else has improved. Yawn.
Bullfrog (@bullfrog)
13th March 2025, 9:45
Everybody says they have moved forward, but everyone’s playing it down. Result: exactly the same as before… (Which is fine, I hope the pendulum swings between a load of teams from race to race.)
baasbas
13th March 2025, 13:07
@bullfrog:
Yes, I think that would be a great premise for this season. Four teams and every track a different team has an advantage. A season long game of maximizing when ahead and minimizing when behind. That would mean those teams will be in contention for both championships so they can’t abandon and stop innovating on the current car. Which hopefully means it will have a carry-on effect for ’26. Where suddenly a Honda powered green car with some Newey aero touches is at the front!
#StrollWDC’26, it is happening!
BasCB (@bascb)
13th March 2025, 21:11
I agree with both of you – for fans there is not much that is better than having 4 teams who are relatively closely matched and have different pecking orders depending on layout etc making it various and interesting the whole year without anyone able to easily gain a big lead.
An Sionnach
13th March 2025, 10:26
As with all the rest of these claims, they’ll have to prove it by driving slowly all season!
PeteB (@peteb)
13th March 2025, 10:39
Embarrassing….
Your team of engineers are much better than ours.
No way! Our engineers are terrible! They don’t know what they’re doing. You could walk and go faster than our car.
Yeah!? Well our car will break down during the first race.
Ours will break down in the first corner!
Dan Rooke (@geekzilla9000)
13th March 2025, 11:08
Verbal Sandbagging. That should be the official term used to describe the teams comments regarding their own car’s performance at the start of each season.
If I were a back-marker team like Sauber I’d be doing the opposite: “We’ve held back in testing, the car has so many innovations under the bodywork that we’re expecting to have both championships nailed down with at least 3 races to go. We’ve had to paint the car bright green so that you can actually make it out on track because it’ll just be a blur.”
And let that confident swagger cause the sponsorship deals to roll in!
All joking aside, I do remember a few years ago that Williams would regularly get the fastest lap time during test when everyone was being careful to no show their hand, and I always thought it was a clever way to drum up interest from sponsors.
An Sionnach
13th March 2025, 11:30
I may be able to pick up the green blur on my 80s blue-red 3d glasses.
Jim from US (@jimfromus)
13th March 2025, 11:34
It looks to be a competitive season in 2025 since according to the drivers every car on the grid is rubbish.
Not sure about competitive racing, but competitive whining is off to a great start.
Adam (@rocketpanda)
13th March 2025, 14:32
Admittedly the consistent urge to play the underdog by *everyone* is becoming annoying, I’d actually have better respect for them if one of them outright said yep, we’re doing good and we’re confident. This constant deflection is dull.
baasbas
14th March 2025, 9:05
@rocketpanda
Let’s be realistic here. Assume a start-of-season-test just took place. All teams have heaps of data and a pretty good idea where they are in the pecking order. Rank the teams, then there is 1 team ahead. Which means all the others are saying in the media they’re behind.
So naturally, reports of a team saying they’re behind outweigh 9 to 1.
From all I read I see teams saying they’re just not there and they’re pointing at McLaren. Then I read Norris saying ‘they’re no further ahead than last year’. Which means they’re ahead.
So…. Can we then conclude most of the answers from all the teams are maybe truthful? And expected?
And there is no ‘sandbagging’? And comments about all teams sandbagging is just a result of 9 to 1 reporting?