‘It’s certainly the plan’ – Norris evaluates chances of victory hat-trick in Monza

Lando Norris is optimistic that he can continue his superb form and win the Italian Grand Prix, but was keen to emphasise that McLaren still have plenty to work on when it comes to their place in the pecking order.

After a lacklustre start to the 2026 season, the reigning World Champion finally returned to the top step at the Hungarian Grand Prix, following the achievement with another hard-fought win in the Netherlands to make him the only non-Mercedes driver to claim back-to-back victories so far.

Although Norris has a chance to extend that streak in Monza, he admitted that predicting a result would be a pointless exercise due to how differently the car behaves at each circuit.

Asked how confident he felt about completing the hat-trick of wins, he said: “It's certainly the plan. It's still hard to know, I think we're at the stage where it's hard to predict where we're going to be.

“I think we also don't want to waste time trying to predict these things. We're just focused, working on the stuff that's in our control. I'm doing the same. Clearly in a good place as a whole team at the minute, we know we have things we really have to try and work on and improve and we'll see if we've been able to make any progress into this weekend.

“Looking forward to it, it's another weekend where we want to be hopeful and believe it's possible. We kind of just have to wait and see.

“It's another track where we want to prove things. I wouldn't say it's a bad circuit for us, we've been good here in the past. I think there are still tracks ahead that I'm not looking forward to quite as much. There's still some good high-speed corners here which we want to try and make use of.

“Still a very long season, lots of different types of tracks we still have ahead of us. The goal is to continue the performances we've had lately, but we'll have to see tomorrow how the pace is and see if we can have another good weekend.”

Norris will be further buoyed by his latest contract that will see him remain at McLaren until the end of 2030, becoming the second driver on the grid to commit to a significant long-term deal after Max Verstappen made a similar announcement ahead of his home race.

“I just love where I am, simple as that,” Norris said of the news. “I don't want to change, don't want to be with other people. Don't want to have a reset and work with anyone else. Happy that I'm with people I love to spend time with, create memories.

“They're my family, [the] team I've been with since beginning in F1, and they're also the team that I believe can help me win races and win more championships. For me there's two big reasons, the people and the performance that we have.

“Not everything in life is about performance, I just want to be places that I'm happy and for now, only been with one team and I'm happy with them.”