Lando on his first half-season as World Champion: “I’m optimistic for the future”

Read time: 8 mins

Lando has proudly sported the Number 1 on the front of his MCL40 this season following his World Championship success in the 2025 season, and while the results haven’t necessarily told the full picture, the qualities that won him his maiden title have continued to shine through.

In a new era for Formula 1, he and the team have needed to get up to speed with a complex set of rewritten regulations and adapt to a very different style of car. For every high, such as his recent win in Hungary, there have been the lows of reliability gremlins, often a common theme following a regulations overhaul.

Two years on from the scene of his maiden victory at the Miami International Autodrome, Lando notched up Pole position in Sprint Qualifying and followed it up by leading a McLaren 1-2 in the Sprint race. Lando went on to finish in second position in the main Grand Prix in Miami, having led the race and been in contention for the overall victory.

Further Sprint race podiums were achieved at the Canadian Grand Prix and on home soil at the British Grand Prix, despite the MCL40’s performance deficit to our competitors at those events. There was another podium result at the Barcelona-Catalunya Grand Prix, when Lando featured in a historic all-British top three, joining Lewis Hamilton and George Russell on the rostrum. And of course, there was a supreme display at the Hungarian Grand Prix, where Lando scored his and the team’s first Grand Prix Pole and victory of the season.

“I think in terms of my driving, and my own performance as a driver, honestly I’m very happy,” Lando says when he looks back at the opening 11 Grands Prix of 2026. “I feel like I have been doing a good job of maximising the car's potential.”

“I feel like I’ve driven better in this half of the season than I probably did to this point last year, to a certain extent, but sadly I’m not leading the championship. Of course, I want a better car and a car that can give me more chances and give me more results for the performance of driving I feel like I’m getting out of it, but that’s Formula 1.”

In the aftermath of back-to-back Constructors’ World Championship successes, and Lando’s Drivers’ triumph in 2025, fifth place in the standings for Lando, and third position for the team, at the midway mark of 2026 does represent a downwards step. But in a new era for the sport, where success has so far been largely achieved by those who are able to develop their car the quickest and maximise power unit performance, context is important.

Not that the team are shying away from the situation and trying to mask reality – there’s a widespread acceptance that they can, and will, do better.

“As a team, and with the car, we’re certainly not quite at the level we want to be at, or we were at last season,” Lando says in his usual matter-of-fact manner. “We have still had some good results, but we also know we’re not where we should be. We’re not happy with that, we’ve been disappointed with our own performance, but we're working hard to improve. We're starting to see the benefits of that hard work - our win in Hungary came as a result of strong upgrades to the car – but we need to keep pushing and keep developing if we're going to continue to fight for wins.”

Lando was the last World Champion of the ground effect era before Formula 1 welcomed overhauled chassis, tyre and engine regulations for the 2026 season, with lighter and nimbler cars on narrower tyres, powered by a completely new power unit that features a near 50:50 split in ICE and electrical energy. After a few years of evolution, it has certainly been a revolution for Formula 1, leading to new challenges for drivers, even one with Lando’s experience and nous.

“We are in a different regulation of car, and it drives differently,” Lando explains. “At the same time, the power unit is also very different, and you have to adapt quite a bit for that. It depends a lot more on the battery, and you have to adjust to understand how to make that work.”

“There’s certain things you need to try and do at times to try and help the battery, there’s certain styles that maybe work a little bit more than previous years, or you need to try and do more than in previous year, that’s more for the battery than the car.”

While the battery – and associated energy management – has understandably dominated the headlines, there have been widespread changes to the 2026 ruleset that have still required work.

“Every race, you learn different things,” Lando says. “There have been plenty of learnings, and areas where we can do a better job. You learn from every little thing that you do, and you always try and make yourself a bit better every day.”

“The tyres have changed, and their characteristics, and that means there’s certain things that are different. You can’t be as attacking as in previous years with the tyres, every car is different – there’s a lot of ways we have to drive this car very differently to last season, and it’s our job to go out and get the most out of these cars.”

“Being halfway into the season, we now better understand these regulations and how to extract performance, as proven by the win in Hungary, but we’ve still got some work to do as a team.”

Over the past two decades, F1 has become known for its willingness to evolve its rules and will happily tinker and tweak from year to year in pursuit of more entertaining races, but rarely has the sport undergone a revamp of this scale.

With so many areas impacted at once, this regulatory reset marks one of the largest overhauls in F1 history, completely reshaping how races unfold on track.

Designed to make racing closer and more exciting while improving environmental sustainability, the new regulations have evolved as the season has progressed, with further developments in the pipeline for 2027 and beyond.

“As we’ve said a few times, these regulations are a bit of a departure from what’s come before, but what we are seeing is more intense racing, more overtaking and more battles,” he says, reflecting on the new regulations and the process to refine them. “It’s important to find the right balance, so that as drivers and teams, we can make the difference on track and deliver exciting racing, but that’s where work is ongoing.”

“In terms of where F1 is as a sport, it’s clearly the healthiest it’s ever been, and we’ve all seen the benefits of that - fans, drivers and teams. F1 will always be great, and I know everyone involved in the sport, me included, is passionate about making it even better still. Sometimes we try to use our voice to improve the sport and that doesn’t always come across the right way, that passion can get the better of us, and it might be the case that in an ideal world we as drivers we would want something a bit different.”

“What is important – and different from the past – is that we know we can go and speak to Stefano (Domenicali), to Mohammed (Ben Sulayem) and have those discussions, but we live in the real world where it’s just it’s not always possible to do everything we as drivers want.”

“We’ve made some good progress this year already, and we know bigger changes will need to come across the next few seasons. We all know that if we can make the racing as exciting as possible, we can make the sport even more enjoyable for the fans, and that’s what we’re working towards achieving.”

Lando has spent the entirety of his Formula 1 career within the McLaren family, first testing for the team back in 2017, and last season became the most experienced driver in the team’s history – 162 races and counting. Lando has therefore lived through the team’s journey from the midfield to a World Championship winner, which has involved a lot of identifying and remedying problems, all while ensuring there’s no drop-off in motivation.

The team have already brought upgrades packages at several Grands Prix through 2026 so far, as well as gaining a better understanding of the optimal development direction, with further upgrades planned after the summer break.

“We still see good potential in the car, and we still believe we can turn things around from where we are now,” Lando says. “That’s something to look forward to, and that is a positive, but you don’t have all the time in the world in Formula 1 – time is your enemy! – so we need to try and bring those improvements as soon as we can.”

“We don't feel like we have fully clicked with our understanding of this car just yet, but even before our latest upgrade package helped us to secure the win in Hungary, we had already secured some good results.”

“We know from the past few years what it is like when you do understand the car and what happens when we can maximise the package. We don't feel like we have gotten close to that potential yet, so we are excited to really try and understand it completely, which is when we'll be able to maximise things.”

“As has also been the case in the past, we know when we’re not quite at the front we need to work together as drivers to help the team out-develop our competition. Oscar and I often have very similar feedback, and we’re working well with the aim of getting McLaren back into contention for wins every weekend.”

Lando clocked off from the first half of the season on the top step of the podium for the first time as a World Champion, converting Pole position into an emphatic victory at the Hungaroring, where he also triumphed during his 2025 campaign. Hoisting aloft the exquisite ceramic trophy for the second time in as many years was a proud moment for Lando and the team, but there is an awareness that one swallow does not make a summer.

“One thing I’ve learned for sure is just to have no expectations of the future and just to work in the present,” Lando says. “I think that’s the way we’ve been doing everything as a team. That’s why we were back on top in Hungary: just working hard on ourselves as individuals and also as a team.”

“Of course, I’m optimistic for the future and I think we can win more races, but we have good competition and there are still plenty of races I’m not confident in because the car is not to the standard that it needs to be in certain areas. But I have confidence in the team. I had confidence that we could win a race, and it came a bit sooner than I thought. I have confidence that we can improve in those areas that are not good enough at the time.”