McLaren’s lack of pace at the Monaco Grand Prix should serve as a “reality check”, according to Lando Norris - but why has McLaren struggled so much at a race it won last year? 

McLaren’s place in the pecking order has swung from track to track, but it was a victory contender at Suzuka, won the Miami sprint race and scooped second amid the Mercedes drivers tangling in the Montreal sprint. 

But Sunday in Monaco will be a case of damage limitation, with its drivers Oscar Piastri and Norris seventh and eighth in qualifying, over half a second off the pace. 

“We're just lacking grip compared to the others,” Piastri told media including The Race, after qualifying. 

“Compared to yesterday, the car actually felt a pretty decent step nicer to drive, which is good but also bad when you're still as far off as we are. 

“We have got a bit closer, things feel a bit nicer, but when you are lacking grip, unfortunately, there's not too many levers you can pull to make up for it.” 

Piastri admitted his wall touch at Rascasse on his first lap of Q3 was because “you've got to find a fair bit of time to even stand a chance of being with the others, [so] mistakes and then wild moments are going to happen.”  

Norris called Monaco a “reality check” of how far off the pace the 2026 McLaren truly is. 

“I'm the one driving the car, so I can tell the difficulty of extracting laptime, how difficult it was already last weekend in Montreal,” Norris said.

“That's why I was so surprised last weekend to be as competitive as we were. Coming here... it’s not an eye-opener, but still a slight reality check of how far off we are. 

“Honestly, when you look at where we've been good,  it's still been not, crazy slow speed tracks, where it was Suzuka, Miami… and into Montreal, my expectations were not high. 

“If you ask me coming into Monaco, I think I said it probably last weekend, I didn’t have high hopes into this weekend. The car is just very difficult to drive, not very compliant, not very forgiving in any way. My confidence level last year was 100, now it's 85 and around Monaco you need to be around 100.” 

Norris put this down to McLaren’s grip and downforce deficiency. 

“We got the tyres to work in the end, we were struggling yesterday, I think we got it in a better window but...When you have less grip and less downforce, it's a bigger struggle to get everything to work,” he said. 

“So maybe comparing to others, yes [we didn’t get the front tyres working as well], but the big thing is we just don't have the grip, we don't have the load, the car doesn't perform as well as it needs to and it's as simple as that.”  

Team boss Andrea Stella named the McLaren MCL40 being gentle on its tyres as one of two reasons why McLaren had low expectations for Monaco, along with the “clear objective” of addressing the aerodynamic load deficit. 

“The MCL40, partly by design, and partly because we want to improve this factor as well, it's very gentle on the tyres, and when you have events where you actually have to be good at introducing energy and heat in the tyres, then we struggle a bit,” Stella explained. 

“So, it was not an easy task to find the right window for the tyres. We needed to work the tyres in the preparation lap in a certain manner, and still we know that, especially in the initial part of a lap, we seem to be losing time compared to some other people.

“So, in Monaco, these two factors, overall grip and load, and the second one, the way you work the tyres, are very essential.”

More was possible? 

Stella felt McLaren could have been on the third row as the team made “significant steps” forward with the set-up overnight, having started “on the backfoot”. 

“That progression was clear in Q1 and Q2, where the car appeared to be much more competitive, relatively,” Stella said with Norris fourth in Q1 and fifth in Q2. 

“Unfortunately, we didn’t quite manage to put it all together in Q3. Lando was on a very strong final lap and was up by a couple of tenths, but a lock-up at the chicane meant we left some performance on the table. As a result, we will lock out the fourth row for tomorrow's race. 

“It’s clear this specific circuit configuration doesn't entirely suit our car's characteristics, and we have work to do to improve in these conditions.”

Norris put that error at the Nouvelle chicane to “pushing a bit too much trying to find three tenths and locked up”. 

Had Norris pieced his best qualifying sectors together, he’d have found 0.262s, which would have put him ahead of Piastri but still only seventh. However, you’d expect that without the last lap mistake, Norris could have gone on to improve his sectors and potentially pipped Isack Hadjar’s Red Bull or George Russell’s Mercedes.

But instead, McLaren is facing a tough Sunday from seventh and eighth on the grid and is relying on opportunities to “repay the team’s hard work” in breaking the curfew to work until 4am on Saturday to repair and strengthen Norris’s car after his practice stoppage.