Lando Norris has joined Max Verstappen in criticising F1’s new generation of cars, calling them “probably the worst” from a driving perspective.

Verstappen has been a vocal and consistent critic of the new 2026 regulations since first trying simulations of them, and his feelings haven’t shifted through pre-season testing and the first race weekend of the new season.

Norris made a dry, light-hearted attempt to counter that narrative early in pre-season testing, but his true feelings about these new cars are quite closely aligned to Verstappen’s, and Norris made those feelings known when questioned after a disappointing first qualifying session of the new season for McLaren.

When The Race suggested onboard footage of the cars from Turns 6 to 9 looks quite depressing, Norris said: “Yeah it is." He quipped he could talk “for hours” about how bad the cars are.

“The problem is you have to look at the steering wheel every three seconds to see what's going to happen, otherwise you're going to end up off the track,” said Norris, who blamed this distraction for his collision with a cooling fan deposited on the track by Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes in Q3.

“We’ve come from the best cars ever made in Formula 1, and the nicest to drive, to probably the worst.

“It sucks, but you have to live with it and just maximise what you get given.

“It's certainly different. It's certainly not like it was last year. It's not like ‘push this corner more’ because sometimes you push more, you lose the battery and you just go slower.

“I think everyone knows what the issues are - it's just the fact that it's a 50-50 split [between electric and combustion power], it just doesn't work.

“Straightline mode means you've got a lot of other issues at hand. You decelerate so much before corners, you have to lift everywhere to make sure the [battery] pack's at the top. If the pack's too high, you're also screwed.

“it's just...difficult, but yeah it's what we have. It doesn't feel good as a driver.”

When asked whether there was any degree of joy he could take from driving this new generation of F1 cars, Norris gave a long, silent pause before eventually replying: “Not really, no.”

To a certain extent, this criticism must be judged against the fact Norris has gone from driving 2025’s most competitive car and winning the world championship, to qualifying sixth and almost a second off the pace for the first race of the new season.

As Lewis Hamilton - who is aligned with the criticism - quipped about Norris's comments from going from 'best' to 'worst' car: "Well, he did!"

And to be fair to Norris, this is something he tacitly acknowledged when, in the same breath as criticising the new rules, he said: “I'm sure George [Russell] is smiling, so it doesn't really matter at the end of the day - you’ve just got to maximize what you get given.”

But the specific problems he describes are also of legitimate concern, considering how the drivers are clearly not pushing hard through the fastest parts of the circuit, or braking aggressively for slower corners in the way they are used to.

“I think everyone can see the state of things,” was Oscar Piastri’s verdict, when asked a similar question in the media pen straight after Norris spoke to The Race and others.

“It's the same as we imagined. We'll have different challenges at other tracks because the tracks are kind of in two categories at the moment of being energy-starved and energy-rich. And there's a problem with either of those things.

“But I think when you're energy-starved like this, it's a lot more obvious to everyone watching.

“I don't know what the Mercedes lap looks like, but we were lifting and coasting three times a lap. We had two superclips through the lap. And in some corners we've got effectively 450 horsepower less.

“It's a massive challenge to get your head around. It's tough for everyone. I think it will probably improve a bit, but there's clearly some fundamental things that won't be very easy to fix. I don't really know what we do about that.”