Lando Norris has taken direct issue with Max Verstappen’s running argument that the 2026 power-unit rules have stripped drivers of the ability to make a difference, telling reporters that anyone quick enough will still find the lap time.
“If you’re a better driver, there are still corners to try and gain an advantage on everyone,” the McLaren driver said, speaking to reporters ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix.
Norris never named Verstappen. He did not need to. The four-time world champion has spent weeks going after the self-learning algorithms that manage battery harvesting and deployment on the 2026 cars, and the reply from McLaren landed as a rebuttal aimed squarely at him.
Spa, Silverstone and the Pouhon exception
Norris was careful not to dismiss the argument entirely. Some corners, he conceded, have been flattened by the new system, but the fast circuits still reward the drivers who can carry more speed.
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“I think if you’re driving better, you’re still going to be ahead at the very fast tracks like Silverstone and Spa,” he said.
He pointed to Pouhon at Spa as the kind of corner where the algorithm now dictates too much of the outcome.
“Like Pouhon [at Spa], where last year you could maybe get close to doing it flat to someone who doesn’t do it flat,” Norris explained.
Twistier venues are a different problem. “On a track like the Hungaroring, I don’t think that’s true at all,” he added, before conceding the system has its own moods: “it’s just sometimes it does random stuff.”
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Verstappen’s version: ‘not allowed to make a difference’
Verstappen has been building his case since Spa, and repeated it during media day in Budapest. His grievance is not that the algorithms are unfair to him personally, but that they neutralize the reason drivers matter.
“You’re not allowed to make a difference because it will just penalise you on the next straight,” Verstappen told Autosport in July.
“It’s not real. It’s not what racing is about.”
He returned to the same theme in Hungary, as Motorsport Week reported: “With your throttle input, by being faster sometimes in the corners, you lose more on the straights afterwards.”
The standings behind the exchange
The subtext is impossible to miss. Verstappen sits sixth in the drivers’ championship on 109 points after 11 rounds, without a single win, according to RacingNews365’s standings tracker. Norris is fifth on 128 points, with a victory in Hungary to his name but well off the pace at the top.
Both are chasing Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who leads the championship on 219 points for Mercedes, 50 clear of Lewis Hamilton in second, with George Russell third.
Norris has also insisted his own driving level has climbed. “I’ve driven better in this half of the season than I probably did to this point last year, to a certain extent,” he told Formula1.com before the summer break, even as he acknowledged McLaren are not where they were during his title year.
The next answer to the argument comes on track. The Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort restarts the season after the summer break, with Verstappen racing on home soil and still looking for his first win of 2026.
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