"We'll be there soon" — Norris claims P3 in Barcelona as McLaren's momentum builds

Lando Norris crossed the line third at the 2026 Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix on Sunday, delivering McLaren their second podium of the season and — perhaps more importantly for the reigning World Champion — his first race finish in three attempts.

Credit: Formula One

It has been a brutal stretch for Norris. A DNS at the Chinese Grand Prix, a gearbox failure in Canada, a power unit retirement in Monaco — the 26-year-old has been struck with numerous car issues over the opening rounds of the year, and his recent run of poor reliability had opened up his points deficit to championship leader Kimi Antonelli to a staggering 98 points before Sunday. Seeing the chequered flag in Barcelona was not a given. It was a relief.

"I've not seen a chequered flag for a while," Norris admitted. "So it's good to be here and just nice to reward the team once again."

That reward came on the back of a quietly effective race. Norris had qualified fourth on Saturday, having topped Friday practice but found Ferrari and Mercedes finding more pace as qualifying developed. A red flag cost him what appeared to be a strong first lap just 250 metres from the finish line, leaving him to settle for the second row. Come Sunday, though, the picture looked different.

On a track where surface temperatures reached 51 degrees and tyre degradation defined strategy, Norris managed his race with precision, recovering from an early deficit to stay within striking range of the leading pair. He found himself around 12 seconds behind George Russell after the first stint, but McLaren's timing on stops was sharp enough to keep him in contention throughout.

"I probably wasn't expecting to be quite that close for the whole race," he said. "The fact we kind of pulled things around and we seemed to be stopping on good laps and things like that, I think shows good signs."

The final podium position was helped by Antonelli's retirement — an electrical failure that ended the championship leader's afternoon in the closing stages — but Norris was candid enough not to dress it up.

"We obviously got a bit lucky with Antonelli going out," he acknowledged, before adding that the underlying pace was genuine. He noted a clear tyre degradation pattern late in each stint that kept him from truly threatening Hamilton or Russell, but maintained that the closeness itself was the point.

"It was clear how much more I had to push comparing to them in the first third and second third of a stint, because it was clear how much more I deg'd off in the final third. But the fact I was there so close shows some good positives for us as a team."

Asked what McLaren still need to close the gap entirely, Norris was measured. "Just a little bit of everything," he said. "These guys are just doing a better job, so we have to give credit to them. But we've just got to keep our heads down and keep working and we'll be there soon."

McLaren had shown signs of closing the gap to the frontrunners in Miami and the Miami Sprint, before reliability issues derailed the momentum. In Monaco — the team's 1000th Grand Prix — Oscar Piastri salvaged fifth as Norris retired with a power unit failure, leaving Barcelona as the reset both driver and team badly needed.

Without the mechanical drama, McLaren looked more like that version of themselves again. Whether it holds at Silverstone remains to be seen — but for a driver who came into the weekend having not scored since the Canadian Sprint, P3 and a clean race was exactly what was needed.