Lando Norris and McLaren Aim for Success at Monza

Lando Norris and McLaren head to Monza riding a wave. Andrea Stella is doing everything he can to keep it from crashing too soon.

Back-to-back poles. Back-to-back wins. A car transformed by upgrades and a driver suddenly dictating the tempo at the front of the grid. Norris arrives at the Italian Grand Prix as the form man in Formula 1, his MCL40 having torn up the high-downforce demands of the Hungaroring and Zandvoort.

The numbers say he is still chasing. Fourth in the standings on 159 points, 83 behind championship leader Kimi Antonelli. The feeling in the paddock says something else entirely. The momentum is orange.

Even Antonelli admitted after Zandvoort that Mercedes are "clearly not the fastest car any more on the grid," a rare public concession from the points leader. Norris, in contrast, sounded like a man who has smelt blood. “The fight's still on, let's keep going,” he told McLaren over the radio after his latest win.

Yet as the sport moves from the twisting dunes of Zandvoort to the flat-out ferocity of Monza, Stella is pulling hard on the handbrake of expectation.

From Downforce to Drag

The Hungaroring and Zandvoort reward the kind of car McLaren have built since their major upgrade package: stable, planted, ruthless through the corners. High downforce, high commitment. That’s where the MCL40 has shone.

Monza is the opposite.

“The real approach we have is just one race at a time,” Stella told media, including RacingNews365. “There's not much more you can influence than just maximising what's next available, and the next race will be Monza.

“And if we think about the demand of Zandvoort and Hungary, and then we think about the demand of Monza, we are in a completely different regime.”

At the Temple of Speed, cars run their lowest drag setups of the year. Full throttle for roughly 80 per cent of the lap. Long, punishing straights. Brutal stops into the Rettifilo and Roggia chicanes. It is a circuit that exposes weaknesses in a way no simulator run ever quite captures.

Stella knows it.

“So I think if we can confirm our improvements in Monza, then I would say that the answer to your question is, 'Yes, we can look with some optimism at the remainder of the season'.”

The subtext is clear: this weekend is a litmus test. If the MCL40 works here, it works almost anywhere.

Norris Unconvinced by the Hype

Norris, despite the champagne and the headlines, is not pretending the car is flawless.

“Despite the win, I'm not fully satisfied,” he said after Zandvoort. “We still have weaknesses, particularly in the slow-speed corners, and we need to improve if we want to fight for the championship.”

Those slow-speed issues matter at Monza. The lap may be defined by its straights, but the time is made – or lost – under braking and on traction out of the chicanes and the Variante Ascari. Any instability or lack of bite on the brakes can turn a front-running car into one clinging to the DRS train.

Stella laid out the concerns with little sugar-coating.

“But first of all, we need to go to Monza and see that our car can express a good performance on the long straights,” he said.

“And we know that drag is not necessarily a point of strength of our car, for instance. There's a lot of braking, which is not necessarily a point of strength of our car.

“So there are a lot of things that we need to confirm... But so far, I think we can confirm that when we are at high-downforce circuits with this sort of layout, then we can fight for victories.”

High downforce? McLaren are there. Low drag, long straights, heavy stops? That remains the unanswered question.

Norris arrives in Italy as the man in form, chasing down a points deficit that once looked unassailable. Monza will reveal whether this is a brief surge or the start of a sustained assault on Antonelli’s title lead.