Lando Norris and McLaren Prepare for Monza Challenge
Lando Norris arrives at Monza riding the hottest streak of his Formula 1 career, but inside McLaren there is no talk of a title charge. Not yet.
Andrea Stella has made sure of that.
The team principal, whose upgraded MCL40 has just ripped through the Hungaroring and Zandvoort with back‑to‑back wins and poles, is already reaching for the brakes ahead of the Italian Grand Prix. The car that looked untouchable in high-downforce trim now heads to the Temple of Speed, a circuit that exposes a very different set of strengths – and weaknesses.
From corner kings to drag doubts
Hungary and Zandvoort suited McLaren perfectly. Tight, technical, high-downforce tracks that reward front-end bite, traction and aero stability. Exactly where the MCL40 has come alive since its major upgrade.
Norris has cashed in. Two wins on the bounce, two pole positions, and a surge up to fourth in the standings on 159 points. He still trails championship leader Kimi Antonelli by 83, but the narrative has shifted. The reigning champion is now the hunter, not the hunted.
Even Mercedes can feel it. After the Dutch Grand Prix, Antonelli admitted his team were “clearly not the fastest car any more on the grid.” Norris, crackling over team radio, made his own intentions clear: “The fight's still on, let's keep going.”
The paddock hears that kind of language. So does Stella – and he is determined not to get swept away by it.
“The real approach we have is just one race at a time,” he told media. “There's not much more you can influence than just maximising what's next available, and the next race will be Monza.”
Then came the caveat. “If we think about the demand of Zandvoort and Hungary, and then we think about the demand of Monza, we are in a completely different regime.”
Monza: a different beast entirely
Monza strips a car bare. Minimal wing. Minimal drag. Maximum exposure.
Around 80 per cent of the lap is spent at full throttle, engines howling through the Curva Grande and down the long straights before brutal stops into the Rettifilo and Roggia chicanes. It is a test of efficiency and braking as much as outright power.
That is where the questions begin for McLaren.
Stella did not dodge them. “First of all, we need to go to Monza and see that our car can express a good performance on the long straights,” he said. “We know that drag is not necessarily a point of strength of our car, for instance. There's a lot of braking, which is not necessarily a point of strength of our car.”
Drag. Braking. Two pillars of Monza performance, two areas where McLaren still feel vulnerable.
Norris knows it too. Even in victory at Zandvoort, he cut through the euphoria with a cold assessment of the MCL40’s flaws.
“Despite the win, I'm not fully satisfied,” he admitted. “We still have weaknesses, particularly in the slow-speed corners, and we need to improve if we want to fight for the championship.”
High-downforce, flowing corners have allowed McLaren to mask some of those issues. Monza’s stop‑start chicanes will not be so forgiving.
The real litmus test
This is why Stella talks about confirmation, not coronation. The last two weekends proved McLaren can dominate on certain types of circuit. Italy will show whether that form can travel.
“There are a lot of things that we need to confirm,” he stressed. Only then did he allow himself a glimpse beyond Monza. “But so far, I think we can confirm that when we are at high-downforce circuits with this sort of layout, then we can fight for victories.
“If we can confirm our improvements in Monza, then I would say that the answer to your question is, ‘Yes, we can look with some optimism at the remainder of the season’.”
That is the line. Not a declaration of war on Antonelli and Mercedes, but a clear marker: survive, or even thrive, at the Temple of Speed, and the conversation changes.
For now, McLaren arrive in Italy as the form team, carrying momentum but also a degree of unease about how their car will behave with the wings stripped off and the braking zones stretched to their limit.
If the MCL40 holds up under that spotlight, Norris’s message from Zandvoort will start to sound less like defiance and more like a warning.
