Lando Norris believes that McLaren can still achieve more victories in the 2026 Formula 1 season. After winning the Hungarian GP in a dominant fashion, the British driver showed confidence in the team’s progress but avoided creating exaggerated expectations for the rest of the championship.
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Despite the triumph in Budapest, the current champion acknowledged that McLaren’s competitiveness still varies from circuit to circuit. Norris highlighted that the team’s focus remains on development work, without assuming that the performance shown in Hungary will be automatically repeated in the upcoming rounds.
This victory at the Hungaroring was Norris’s first of the current season and the 12th of his Formula 1 career. The driver converted pole position into a win with a fifteen-second advantage over Max Verstappen. Before that, his title defense had been marked by difficulties, including a non-participation in the Chinese GP, retirements at the Canadian GP and Monaco GP, as well as a performance deficit compared to Mercedes. During the current category break, he occupies fifth position in the championship, 91 points behind leader Kimi Antonelli.
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Speaking to the press, Norris explained that he prefers to keep his feet on the ground: “I’m just happy to win in Budapest. That doesn’t mean that if we were fast there, we will be fast everywhere. One thing I’ve learned is not to create expectations for the future and just work in the present. That’s how we’ve done things as a team. That’s how we got back to the top, working hard individually and also as a team. Now I just want to enjoy the break,” he said.
McLaren was about a second per lap behind Mercedes in the first races of this year and acknowledged that it started the development battle about three months late. The updates introduced recently have significantly reduced that gap, although the car’s ideal operating range is still limited. Even so, Norris showed confidence in the progress: “I’m optimistic for the future and I think we can win more races this year. There are still tracks where I’m not confident because the car needs to evolve in some areas, but I have confidence in the team. I believed we could win a race, that happened sooner than I imagined, and I believe we will continue evolving,” concluded the British driver.
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