Lando Norris and McLaren should scare Kimi Antonelli and Mercedes

Kimi Antonelli is almost certainly just weeks away from being crowned F1 drivers' champion.

He could, by this stage at least, be aptly described as champion-elect; such is his stranglehold on the standings.

In many ways, it feels like F1 and Antonelli are in this sort of in-between phase, where the title has been decided beyond any reasonable doubt, but now awaits the mere formality of the 20-year-old being coronated.

But success in sport is rare and fleeting, and you don't get to enjoy the moment for long. The greats — at anything, really — quickly turn their attention to what's next. You've scaled that summit, you've conquered that crucible, so what are you going to do now? Or, in the case of a champion, do it again.

This is in no way designed to diminish what will be a campaign for the history books and an achievement he will rightly be handed his flowers for.

But attention will soon turn to the hard work of the close season, and then pre-season, and then, before you know it, it's starting all over again.

There's a championship to win soon becomes there's a championship to retain. 

And, as Lando Norris will attest, defending a title is by various measures a more complicated, fraught, and taxing affair.

In theory, it will be somewhat simpler for Antonelli than the McLaren driver has experienced this year, as the F1 regulations remain broadly stable heading into 2027, with no transition from one distinct generation to the next this time around.

Norris unleashed

However, it's not always so easy when you suddenly find the target now on your back and the opposition closing in.

Even if, somehow, by some freak occurrence or perhaps divine intervention, Antonelli does not manage to get the title over the line, Norris will not be going back-to-back.

His reign is over; his defence is done. 106 points behind the young Italian with only eight or nine rounds to play with, the maths is simply no longer mathsing.

And in many ways, that's fine. Like Antonelli, the 13-time grand prix winner has been superb this season. Results haven't always shown it. Reliability issues and the late-blooming MCL40 have seen to that, but the post-title Norris is clearly operating at a higher level than before, elevated to a higher plane; one reserved, it would seem, for champions.

At the Madring, for all its flaws, Norris was — for the third time in four rounds — pretty much flawless.

And when he's been the fastest guy out there of late, he's crushed the opposition with utter dominance.

In Spain, he was tenths of a second per lap quicker than anyone else. The same at the Hungarian Grand Prix, too.

When he's driving with verve, in a groove with his McLaren, the only thing that can stop him is the virtual safety car.

Winning the title last year unleashed him; freed him from the shackles of self-doubt that seemed at times to be uniquely him — and he knows it.

In recent weeks, Norris has spoken about being able to beat anyone when he has the car to do it, and yeah, at the moment, fair enough. 

It's refreshing to see him embrace it, given how much has been made of his honest and self-reflective nature, and he's doing a fine job at emulating what Max Verstappen managed last year, proving that he's every bit the champion the machinery at his disposal might not have shown him to be.

And if he can carry that confidence into 2027, we could be in for one hell of a fight, because McLaren is once again proving to have an innate understanding of how to develop its car.

McLaren's solid platform

The Woking-based squad started the campaign on the back foot, hazed by the lingering hangover necessitated by pouring extra resources into helping Norris claim the very championship he now wears with such casual ease.

And as a power unit customer at the start of a new rules era, it was playing catch-up there too.

Save for the brief hope brought about by his consecutive victories at the Hungaroring and Zandvoort, Norris' title defence really was over before it began — and likewise McLaren’s constructors' crown.

Over the past few years, the team's upgrade philosophy and methodology have consistently delivered sustained gains.

Not only in the sense that the car improves in real terms, and those large developments have been transformative on multiple occasions, but rather the deliberate approach adopted has often meant McLaren is the only top team capable of positive mobility in F1's pecking order of competitiveness. It's how the once-great team returned to the sharp end in the first place.

Those iterations in 2023 and 2024 are well-trodden ground by now, but what differs from this time around, and the updates it brought to Budapest as an example, is that McLaren feels it had the fundamentals of this year's car correct from day one.

"There's a fundamental difference to 2023 — this car that we have at the moment is a solid platform," Stella told me at the Chinese Grand Prix.

"If anything, it's likely underdeveloped; there's nothing in the car that is not sound conceptually. It just needs to be developed further, but following the conceptual lines that we have outlined in the launch phase of this car.

"In 2023, we needed to rectify some designs, pursue some different aerodynamic concepts, because the concept... would not have taken us very far."

So this time, there was no need to change direction, pivot, or claw back lost performance; it started with the right platform, but held off bringing a sophisticated, Spec-A type car — like Mercedes — in favour of a differently considered strategy once the season got going in anger.

And now it's starting to pay dividends, leaving the team in a strong position heading into '27.

On-song and in harmony

In recent rounds, Norris and the MCL40 have been almost perfectly on-song, working in harmony to extract maximum performance.

If you're wondering why I've singled Norris out to take the fight to Antonelli, it's because that unison cannot currently be said of Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren, and he's struggled to match his team-mate's pace all season.

No doubt, the Australian will get there and be able to once again push Norris, but the driving style required of the new cars has meshed better with the latter, and his ability to adapt to the delicate, changing needs of the car, at a stage of the regulations cycle where downforce and mechanical grip are relatively low, which — in addition to being able to Piastri still "thinking and driving", according to Stella — is giving Norris, who is driving more naturally, the edge.

Further aiding McLaren's uptick in results is the strides it has made in tackling the main weakness of the car, low-speed performance.

The team should be heartened by the improvements in that area it made across the weekend at the Madring, through set-up tweaks and alterations.

And if it can address that deficiency in future upgrades, too, the already-solid platform it has will be more consistent and formidable across corner and circuit profiles.

If there is any team on the F1 grid to place faith in its ability to not only turn a situation around, but relentlessly and dependably deliver performance to its car, it's McLaren.

That, paired with a Norris who feels he can win week in, week out, so long as he has the car to do so, will be a powerful combination — and one Antonelli and Mercedes ought to be wary of.