Lando Norris and his dramatic moment with McLaren

The Englishman missed almost 40 minutes of Saturday’s practice session in Japan due to a problem with the battery of the Mercedes power unit, a new problem that affected the champion this year.

If some psychic had announced to Lando Norris the enormous amount of problems that he would experience in his first three races of his reignI probably wouldn’t have believed it. But it’s real: the champion is experiencing a drama with McLaren’s reliability that has him spending more time in the pits than on the track. The last chapter was in the third practice session of the Japanese GP, in Suzuka. But it all started in Melbourne…

The Australian GP marked the beginning of the new technical era of Formula 1 and Norris was ready to go out for the first time with the 1 painted on his car in an official session, after having debuted it in preseason. The traffic light turned green at Albert Park to begin the first training session and…Norris couldn’t get out. A problem with the gearbox caused him to miss 80% of the session and he barely made seven laps. Once the problem was overcome, the second Australian session arrived and… The fuel pump. Again a while in the pits until the mechanics solved it. In qualifying he suffered a broken front wing during Q3 and the mechanics repaired it with tape.

China and the sumun arrived: on Sunday Norris couldn’t even leave the pits. A serious battery problem left his McLaren inside the pits when they closed and he would never come out. Directly, he couldn’t start the race. Adding insult to injury at McLaren was the defection of Oscar Piastri, who has not yet been able to start any competition in 2026 (in Australia he had an accident in the open pit laps before the grid).

The champion’s troubles continued in Japan. A hydraulic leak caused him to lose 20 of the 60 minutes of the session. In the second round, the hydraulic leak complicated things again for Norris, who was stored for 30 minutes. And this Saturday, already in the third round, another battery problem occurred that left him 37 minutes into the practice hour in the pits. Norris could not have had a worse start to the defense of the crown.