Lando Norris refuses to surrender hope that he can defend his Components One drivers’ championship, regardless of admitting that it has been an “extremely arduous” 2026 season thus far for his McLaren group.
The 2025 champion is already 98 factors behind Kimi Antonelli within the standings after his meant he has now failed to complete in half of the opening six races of the present marketing campaign. It marks a drastic change of fortune for the 26-year-old, who beat off competitors from Max Verstappen and teammate Oscar Piastri to win his first championship final season.
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With the factors hole to Antonelli rising quickly, Norris insists that he’ll proceed believing for so long as doable, as he appears to be like to mark a return to kind on the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix this weekend.
Norris continues to imagine regardless of McLaren’s struggles
Talking to the media together with GPBlog on Thursday, Norris admitted that it “hurts” that he has not been in a position to end on the highest step of the rostrum, with mechanical points creating an excellent larger hole to him and Antonelli. Nevertheless, he nonetheless believes that regardless of his troubles throughout the opening six races, he can nonetheless win the title, highlighting Miami and Canada as tracks the place his McLaren was aggressive.
“I nonetheless imagine that we are able to win. We should always have gained in Miami, we might have gained a race this yr on pure tempo, we might have deserved it. So there’s loads of hope, I believe it is simply the DNFS that we have now had, the unreliability that’s hurting us probably the most. Monaco was troublesome as a result of we struggled with tempo there anyway, however I do not the the title is unimaginable.
Photograph: Race Footage
Photograph: Race Footage
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“I’ll nonetheless imagine for so long as doable that it’s doable. I nonetheless imagine as a group we are able to flip issues round and make progress. However we’re additionally up towards a group and a driver (Kimi Antonelli) that’s doing an unbelievable job. It is arduous to have loads of confidence if you end up up towards somebody like that. However what provides us confidence is Miami and Canada we have now had two respectable weekends on tempo, we had one podium we might have had a second. So the starvation and perception continues to be there. We have to imagine that it’s doable.”
