Lando Norris did not hold back in his criticism of McLaren’s 2026 car after a difficult qualifying session at the United States Grand Prix.

Norris saw his fastest time deleted after initially qualifying in sixth place, dropping him down to eighth.

Lando Norris criticises McLaren MCL40 as ‘hardest car I’ve driven’

The outgoing F1 champion has dropped back after enjoying a purple patch in the middle of the season.

Despite this, he has retained a comfortable advantage over McLaren teammate. But he will start one place behind Oscar Piastri on Sunday, after losing two places through a track limits violation on his final Q3 effort.

Norris was far from the only driver caught out in the session, with Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar also losing their final times for Red Bull, although neither had improved on their final efforts, so it made no difference.

Track limits has been a talking point all weekend, with over 200 breaches on Friday and, despite the white lines being widened at several key corners, more than 40 infringements during Saturday’s final practice.

Asked how difficult sticking to the track limits has been this weekend, Norris told Sky Sports: “Not at all. It’s fine. I just did a terrible job today. I’m just not very happy with myself.”

He added: “It’s just a mixture of everything, honestly.

“It’s easily the hardest car I’ve driven in my life, but it was still easily good enough for P2 today. It’s just disappointing really.”

Speaking to the written media, Norris went further, suggesting that he needs to adjust his expectations of what is possible on a race weekend.

“It might be that the car is just not quick enough, and therefore there’s always like hope, there’s always hope that I can do a mega lap and I can be P1,” he said.

“But you improve three corners, and the other three are a nightmare all of a sudden.

“So it’s just impossible. It’s an impossible car to achieve the perfection that I want to achieve at the minute, which is a struggle because I want to go for pole, and I need to tell myself to settle for a P5, and I don’t want to do that.”

Norris’ comments come at the event after he collided with teammate Piastri in the Singapore sprint race with a move that he maintains was on despite the conditions.

While McLaren CEO Zak Brown made clear at the time that there would be an internal punishment dished out. The nature of this has remained private, but Norris’ comments are unlikely to have gone down well with the hierarchy that supported him to world championship glory less than 12 months ago.