McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri retain the freedom to race wheel-to-wheel heading into the Formula 1 United States Grand Prix, though team leadership has drawn a hard line against further on-track contact.
Speaking during Thursday media availability in Austin, Norris addressed the fallout from the previous round in Singapore, where he and his teammate collided on the final lap of the Sprint. Although race stewards ultimately classified the incident as a racing incident, Norris accepted responsibility for the clash.
“I got plenty of telling-offs, and plenty of words have been said. But we’re still allowed to race,” Norris told reporters. He added that the team cannot afford a repeat of the Singapore collision or a recurrence of their Turn 1 Sprint incident at the Circuit of the Americas from the previous year. “We’re still allowed to race, but obviously we can’t have a coming together, and we have to avoid that at every opportunity possible.”
Beyond internal team dynamics, Norris addressed McLaren’s broader competitive standing and performance challenges. The squad has struggled to replicate the dominant form it displayed during the European summer stretch, when Norris secured back-to-back victories in Hungary and the Netherlands alongside three pole positions.
Despite those earlier successes, the British driver pointed to fundamental handling limitations within the machine, arguing that raw speed masked significant underlying drivability issues. He described the car as exceptionally difficult to master when pushed to the absolute limit during qualifying sessions.
“This was a car in which putting together a qualifying lap was almost impossible, and being as quick as we were was almost impossible,” Norris said. Reflecting on his narrow pole positions earlier in the season, he noted that success required extraordinary driving precision to compensate for an unforgiving chassis.
Looking toward the remainder of the season and preparations for future campaigns, Norris emphasized that extracting performance under such narrow margins is unsustainable for a sustained championship challenge. While he remains confident that additional race wins remain achievable before the current season concludes, he stressed that engineering priorities must shift for next year.
“This isn’t a car you can win a championship with. I still believe a win is possible this year. We just need a quicker car now if we want to get another win,” Norris said. “But going into next year, we need a car that’s a lot more drivable and easier to drive. Because, yeah, you cannot win a championship with how difficult the car is to drive at the minute.”
