> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.the-race.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # McLaren puzzled by persistent Norris-only F1 car problem - URL: https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mclaren-puzzled-by-persistent-lando-norris-only-f1-car-problem/ - Published: 2026-10-03T12:50:38.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-03T12:52:39.000Z - Description: Lando Norris has a straightline speed deficit to team-mate Oscar Piastri for the second Formula 1 weekend running in Malaysia, one his McLaren team doesn’t understand - Author: Josh Suttill - Tags: Formula 1, #bahrain-grand-prix, McLaren, #lando-norris, #secondary_feature_3 Lando Norris has a straightline speed deficit to team-mate Oscar Piastri for the second Formula 1 weekend running in Malaysia, one his McLaren team doesn’t understand. Norris struggled with a small straightline deficit on his McLaren in Baku versus Piastri, because of an issue that the team suspected was linked to fuel injection in the power unit. That deficit is still present at Sepang where Norris was over six tenths off pole in qualifying sixth, albeit 0.005s ahead of Piastri. "I felt like my lap was very strong…I'm still struggling a lot in the straights everywhere. I'm just down on every single straight," Norris said. "Every time I get a good exit, I'm just slower in the end of the straight. It just hurts seeing this every single time, so I should be higher up, not because I could have done a better job necessarily, but just because we're not getting everything out of the car that we need to. "That doesn't \[just\] make my life tough today, but it also makes it tough for tomorrow." The straightline speed deficit between Norris (white line) and Piastri (orange line) in qualifying is clear when you look at the data for the second half of their fastest Q3 laps. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/dd/af/ddafbd99-2ccd-468c-b622-4b3cccf80b49/content/images/2026/10/image.png) "We should say that the issue we see on Lando’s car is about a lack of straightline speed," McLaren team boss Andrea Stella confirmed after qualifying. "So we see that in the power limited section, the car accelerates a little less and develops a little bit less top speed, all the other parameters being the same. We talk about probably between one and two kph, like they are small quantities. "They are even difficult to see because as soon as Lando, for instance, has a little bit of slipstream from a car four seconds ahead, now you see Lando faster than the other car. "It’s small quantities that we see statistically and we should more precisely talk about the deficit of straightline speed. OK, which we can quantify in a laptime loss that I would say in excess of one tenth of a second, possibly between one and two tenths of a second." McLaren doesn’t understand what’s behind the issue and it won’t be able to fix it until the next race in Singapore at the earliest, meaning Norris will have to suffer with it through this grand prix. "\[It’s a\] different conversation is about why that is and why we can talk immediately about a lack of power," Stella added. "In reality, there can be different reasons. It's more difficult to monitor what is happening from a power unit point of view because if it was deployment, we would be able to see it possibly has to do with some other parameters. "But at the same time, there's behaviours of the power unit that depend on what's happening on the chassis side. "Finally, there could be parameters that have to do with the drag of the car. "So it's at no point we are making a point about power unit. We are just making a point about a lack of straightline speed, which we want to make a point about because it's fair to Lando that we take the responsibility for the fact that on his car, there's a laptime deficit, which at the moment we have not been able to remove in a couple of events. "But obviously, we are definitely looking at all the possible parameters, and we will look at further changes, but we only can do that now for Singapore."