The Briton was in action on Day 2 of the final Bahrain test on Thursday morning, achieving P5 on the timing charts overall with a 1:33.453, after completing 72 laps for McLaren.

Speaking to media, including GPblog, Norris was asked to assess where he thought the Woking team stand against the likes of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari, having had a clear pace advantage throughout 2025.

“At the minute, we’re a little bit off, so to match the race pace of some of the others, we have to push a bit more and then we have more degradations.

“It’s not as simple as just continuing from last year and saying it’s the same thing again. You know at the minute we have to improve the car quite a bit if we want to compete a bit more to be confident for the first race, but I feel confident.”

The 26-year-old was then asked about life as a world champion, on whether he felt an extra responsibility to retain his title, to which the McLaren driver said he was instead 'reassured' that he could repeat the feat.

"I would love to (win), but I don’t think there’s like a responsibility. Always in life I’ll do my best to defend it and continue it, but it’s a new season with loads of new challenges.

“That’s a good thing, but it’s a long season and I’ll make sure I do my part. Together as a team we’ll make sure we give ourselves the best opportunity to do it again.”

The world champion also appeared to perform a U-turn on his opinion of the 2026 F1 cars, having previously said they were a lot of fun to drive. Speaking to GPblog on Thursday, however, Norris said he mostly agreed with Max Verstappen's harsh criticism of the new cars.