While the McLaren MCL39 is “by a little margin” the fastest car of F1 2025, rivals should not have qualified so far away.

That is the blunt verdict issued by Australian Grand Prix winner Lando Norris, who hinted too much credit has been placed on McLaren’s new creation for the season.

Can Lando Norris be stopped? Rivals ‘should not have been as far off’

After Bahrain testing, McLaren went into the F1 2025 campaign as favourites for many to win the titles, their performance over race runs in particular having turned heads.

As it so happened, their one-lap pace proved mighty too at the season-opening Australian GP, Norris taking pole ahead of team-mate Oscar Piastri with a gap of almost four-tenths to closest non-McLaren challenger Max Verstappen in the Red Bull.

Norris would withstand late heavy pressure from Verstappen in a rain-impacted Grand Prix to start his season and title challenge with a win.

And afterwards, Norris had a response to talk about the McLaren MCL39.

Norris, with a smile, said: “I don’t know why people always talk about the car so much, like I don’t know…

“Too many questions in the media are about just the car.”

The Brit would play down the advantage he feels comes from the MCL39 over rival challengers, and hinted that others should be looking in the mirror instead when it came to the margins.

“Like, me and Oscar drove very, very well yesterday,” Norris continued. “I’m not saying others didn’t, but others should not have been as far off as what they were. That was clear.

“But I think we do, by a little margin, have the best car. I’m not denying that. But not everything is about the car, and that’s clear.

“But, today was a deserved win I think, because we made good decisions as a team. And in the past like last year, we would have done the same race and we wouldn’t have won the race, because we were not the best at making those decisions and today we were.

“So, I give a lot of credits to the team, because they worked hard over the winter to make sure they were ready for a day like today.”

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Returning to the topic of how the media has been reacting to McLaren, Norris claimed they were not the fastest over one lap coming out of Bahrain testing.

“In Bahrain a couple of weeks ago, we came out confident, but everyone was hyping us up a lot,” said Norris. “Mainly just because our high-fuel pace was very strong. But on low fuel, we were struggling.

“We were not as quick as some of the others. Even if we took all our fuel out and max the engine mode, I don’t think we would have been quicker. We know we have work to do. If we raced in Bahrain again, I wouldn’t be confident we could win the race.

“But I’m confident that when we go to China next weekend, we can be very strong, because we were strong there last year with not a very good car.”

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