Lando Norris believes McLaren is the only Formula 1 team with “two good drivers at the minute”.
While McLaren appears to have a marginal pace advantage, F1 2025 is shaping up to be a four-way fight between that team, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes.
Reigning champion Max Verstappen believes McLaren is “quite comfortably ahead” but Norris said he thinks that margin is being skewed by the strength of McLaren’s driver line-up right now.
“We've seen over the last week and a half, other people saying that they don't think they were that far away,” Norris said.
“So as much as Max might say stuff, his last stint in China was very strong, still not as good as us, but it was a lot more competitive.
“I saw [Ferrari team boss] Fred Vasseur said that he thinks that Ferrari should be competing against us and a lot more up there. In fact, they beat us in the sprint, and they qualified ahead of us [in the sprint], so [we’re] not that far ahead of them.
“People love to be saying that [but it’s] because we literally are the only team that has two good drivers at the minute. That's the big difference.
“If one of us was doing a lot worse, or one of us was not as strong, we would be...the [Shanghai] sprint Oscar was, what second or third, and I was already eighth, but you'd have that a lot more often, like you do with Ferrari, or like you do with Red Bull. Max is up there, and you have the other driver a lot further back.
“So I think just the fact we have two good drivers is honestly making the biggest difference, because in certain cases I don’t think we necessarily had the quickest one where there was a sprint last weekend in the qualifying or the race, but the fact that we have just two good drivers pushing each other makes just a bigger difference than people expect and take acknowledgement for.
“So, do I agree we have the best car? Yes, and it's nice to say that we know. I have not had that before in Formula 1.
“Max has had his time of having the best car by a long way, and now it's our chance, you know, and it's our turn.
“That's the game, you try and get every advantage possible and McLaren have done a very good job to beat the rest and make it better than everyone else so we’ll take the advantage while we can, but the others are certainly not that far behind.”
What's hurting Ferrari's line-up
Norris was asked to clarify why he thought McLaren had a better line-up than Ferrari at the moment.
“The Ferrari one is obviously the experience side, of not experience in Formula 1, because we are lacking [compared to them] in that department, but just two drivers who understand the team who have been at the team for a long time,” Norris replied.
“Obviously, Lewis is new to the Ferrari, he openly says he's still learning how to use the steering wheel - the complexity of the steering wheel, not just how to use one. So is he going to be able to get every last bit of it out of the car compared to what me an Oscar can? No, he's openly admitting to that.
“So it's not that I think I'm much better than Lewis or Charles, because I don't, and I have always been the first to admit that, I would never put myself on any pedestal ever. But how we work as a team, I do think is better than every other team. How we push each other and get the more out of one another as two drivers.
“I also agree we’re better than any other team. So I think that's our advantage.”
Unbeatable talk is 'nonsense'
There’s been talk of McLaren going unbeaten ever since Norris took pole for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, with Mercedes driver George Russell claiming McLaren was so dominant it could afford to fully switch focus to its 2026 car in March.
“I think the people that say that, like the unbeatable stuff, it's just nonsense that they just like to talk crap sometimes,” Norris said.
“It’s your job as the media to figure out these things, and not just listen to what everyone says and write what they say, you have to try and understand what they're saying and prove what they're saying is a fact rather than I can just say load of crap and you write it down.
“But it’s up to you, I think, to get across the facts of what is true and not just write nonsense that people like to say.
“If you go back one year ago, Red Bull were still a lot further ahead than we are now. The fact that they had two drivers up there dominating, they were a lot further ahead than we are now.
"So I think we're doing a very good job and I feel like people are talking about us a lot more now, but I think it's because of where we've come from over the last year and a half, the deficit we've come from, but the car Red Bull had at this time last year was a lot better than what we have now, comparing to our competitors.
“So you have to take that into account. We all feel good as a team knowing that we have a strong car, not always the easiest car to drive, but a very strong car and the strongest car on the grid.
“But the target [on our backs] is a nice thing. We're still new to it, Mercedes had it for like, five, six years where there they were the target. So I think we’ve got a bit of time before we get to those kind of numbers. So for now, it's still like a motivating thing, it’s, ‘Oh, we are at the front, we know that they're behind us’, so it still really pushes us.
“When you do it for four, five, six, years, like Mercedes did back then, that's probably at some point, and it's just only human, that you start to get a little bit complacent with certain things.
“But I think for us, we pushed even more into this season, to start the season off on the right foot, ending with a very good year last year. And we want to still try and increase our advantage more than what it is now.”
Is Norris talking nonsense too?
In an age of extreme PR driver training and manufactured drama, Norris’s driver line-up claims are brilliantly bullish...and hard to argue against right now.
McLaren has the best car as Norris himself acknowledges. The scale of its true advantage is hard to read, but McLaren is the clear title favourite and the favourite going into every weekend.
That’s not because of the drivers; that’s because of the car. Place any of Verstappen, Charles Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton or George Russell in an MCL39, and you’d expect the same once they’re up to speed.
But Norris is right in that he’s saying McLaren has the best pairing “at the minute”.
Verstappen has been fantastic once again, executing some great damage limitation in a tricky RB21. But Liam Lawson failed so miserably in the second car it takes Red Bull completely out of contention of having the best line-up, and we’ll have to wait to find out if Yuki Tsunoda fares any better.
Kimi Antonelli has started his rookie season brightly enough, but he’s clearly not yet at the level of the lead frontrunning drivers. So Norris is right about Mercedes too.
Ferrari is perhaps the most questionable one, given Hamilton has started his adaptation strongly. He won the China sprint race and has been only a marginal step behind Leclerc so far this season - adapting far quicker than many expected.
McLaren being 61 points ahead of Ferrari says far more about McLaren’s pace advantage and Ferrari’s shambolic trackside operations across Australia and China than it does about driver line-up quality.
But you’d probably still give McLaren the nod on the basis that both Norris and Piastri look capable of dominating an entire weekend from start to finish, while Hamilton’s ongoing adaptation means there will be weekends like Shanghai, where he can be half-dominant, half-lost at sea with an errant set-up change.
So Norris is probably right for now. Just don’t expect it to be such a clear-cut statement for much longer.
