Lando Norris’s 2026 season is shaping up to be the most disappointing one for a defending champion since Sebastian Vettel’s catastrophic 2014.
But while Vettel’s year was defined by struggles with an uncompetitive and unreliable Renault engine, McLaren’s 2026 has been an accumulation of small but telling frustrations: a chassis that’s effective enough for Norris to have won the Miami sprint race from pole, but troubled by a lack of front-end ‘feel’ and the presence of mysterious electrical gremlins.
