Norris details crucial McLaren strategy in title defence pursuit

Lando Norris has detailed McLaren's strategy to hopefully defend its F1 constructors' title in the season which gets underway this weekend in Australia.

Last year, McLaren secured its first constructors' crown since 1998 after a remarkable comeback in the second half of the campaign. 

McLaren found themselves well adrift of Red Bull after the opening races, but fought back with a run of strong results and impressive upgrades. 

Heading into the 2025 season, the Woking-based team is the bookies favourite to defend its title, whilst Norris is the favourite to claim a maiden drivers' championship. 

However, as pointed out by Norris, it is a long season, starting in Albert Park this Sunday where mixed weather is forecast. 

Norris is feeling strong heading into the campaign, but is not overly concerned if McLaren experience a difficult start to the season.

He has outlined that the overall goal of the team is to simply progress throughout the 24 races, to ensure it does not fall backwards.

"I'm confident, I'm relaxed, I'm focused on doing my job, but it's long season, so it honestly doesn't matter how I feel now," Norris told NBC News. 

"I feel good, I feel ready to get going. But even whether we have an amazing start or a bad start that doesn't set up the season. As we proved last year, we can come from a long way back. 

"I think we had over a 100 points deficit to the title leaders at some points of the season. So we want to start off on the right foot, and I'm confident we can do that. So my confidence is high for for that, but it's too difficult to say anything more accurately apart from that. 

"So we just need to keep our heads down, keep progressing over the season, because when you're not progressing, you're going backwards in Formula 1. So you have to keep working hard, continuously, and that's our goal for this year."