Norris offers worrying McLaren assessment in major Red Bull, Ferrari claim

Speaking to GPblog after his run on the second day of testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, the British driver acknowledged Red Bull’s clear advantage thanks to a highly efficient power unit.

“There might be some little things I can do better, but that's certainly not going to make the difference to what they're doing. They have a very good power unit by the looks of things; they deploy well and have a lot of efficiency. We need to understand how they have that,” Norris explained.

Norris continued by highlighting that, despite a few areas McLaren can improve on regarding their powertrain, the Red Bull team appears to have executed their development exceptionally well.

“There are always things I can maybe do a little better, and there are some things we as a McLaren team can improve, but also from a McLaren HPP side, there's Mercedes. I think they know there are certainly areas we need to improve. But the Red Bulls seem to have done a very good job, and the Ford powertrain seems to be very strong, fair play to them. At the minute, they're a good step ahead of us,” he added.

When asked if McLaren could close the gap in the coming days, Norris admitted the team also appears to be trailing Ferrari.

“It's tricky. I mean, Australia’s a very different track at the same time. But when someone just has a deployment advantage, that’s just a beautiful bit of lap time to have in your pocket. It’s like, without trying, you can just go quicker. We’ll see,” Norris said.

However, expressing optimism about McLaren making improvements, Norris detailed his confidence in the papaya-coloured team making huge steps as time goes on.

“I certainly know we’re going to improve and we’re going to make progress going forward, but I’m sure they are as well,” he added.

“We have to wait and see. There’s no point trying to guess these things. We’ll do all the work we can and maximise our efforts at the minute. But we’ve got a pretty big step to make to be confident of beating them, that’s for sure,” he concluded.

Earlier, Norris dismissed Verstappen’s claim about the new Formula 1 regulations. The Dutch driver had stressed that the 2026 cars felt like Formula E cars on steroids.

Norris, however, in his assessment, advised the four-time world champion to retire if he doesn’t enjoy driving the current generation of cars.