Norris warns rest of the grid: "We'll have track where we're even better"

In a race that saw three safety cars and changeable conditions, Norris and McLaren played their strategy perfectly and drove flawlessly to take an impressive win in the opening race of the 2025 season.

After challenging Max Verstappen last year in the drivers' standings, many are tipping the Brit to be the world champion for this campaign, and the drive around the Albert Park circuit today showed why he and McLaren are the duo to beat, showing some fantastic pace that could not be matched, as well as dealing with the wet conditions that Melbourne threw at the teams and drivers.

Norris says McLaren is "much more balanced" for 2025

However, despite taking an impressive victory in Australia, Norris believes that there is still more to come from him and his car at different circuits, saying, "I think we'll have tracks where we will be even better.

"But, I think we'll have a couple of tracks for sure where we struggled. We were good, especially in the second half of the season. But in Las Vegas, we were pretty woeful, In fact, we were shocking, and there are other tracks along those lines where we struggled."

But the Brit is a bit more positive going into circuits where the McLaren might have struggled last year: "I think we've definitely made our car much more balanced, for all types of circuits, high speed, low speed, high downforce, low downforce, all of those kinds of things, and we're competitive at most. But these kinds of low grip tracks like Vegas, we really struggled and really highlighted our issues with the front of the car, the graining, just our lack of rotation that we have.

"But we know that though. We know where we're going to struggle. I think even in Bahrain a couple of weeks ago, we came out with confidence that we're good, but everyone was hyping us up a lot, mainly just because of our high fuel [speed], and our high fuel [speed] was very strong. But with low fuel, we were genuinely struggling a bit. We were not as quick as some of the others, and even if we did take all of our fuel out and max engine modes, I don't think we would have been quickest," continued the 25-year-old.

"We know we have work to do and if I think we race in Bahrain as round one, I wouldn't be confident that we could win the race. But I'm confident that we're going to say China next weekend and we can be very strong because we were strong there last year with not a very good car. There will be mixtures, and Vegas was our worst last season, so I'm hoping we'll improve the car by then," concluded Norris.