“This is not racing, this is yo-yoing,” declares Lando Norris in fresh attack on rules overhaul.
While Mohammed ben Sulayem couldn’t pin his precious winners medal on Kimi Antonelli fast enough, and Stefano Domenicali was all over the top three finishers in the cool down room like a proud Uncle, both are Missing In Action in terms of addressing the ongoing criticism of the 2026 regulations.
However, while fans (and seemingly drivers) opinions can be ignored, as negative social media posts are shadow banned, broadcast images manipulated, radio interactions not broadcast and lawyers threaten anyone posting onboard footage on social media, there is an elephant in the room.
It would appear that last weekend’s race saw a massive decrease in viewing figures in a number of countries, fans are voting with their TV remotes.
As one would expect, in Italy viewing figures are on the rise thanks to Kimi Antonelli, but elsewhere the audience is plummeting, and no amount of gaslighting from the likes of ‘Crofty’, Jenson Button et al is going to prevent people cancelling their subscriptions.
Lando Norris has already made his views on the 2026 regulations crystal clear, but in the aftermath of Sunday’s race, the 2025 world champion spoke out again.
“You have two sides of it,” he told reporters. “From a race point of view, we have more of the safety side, which might have been the cause of today,” he added, referring to Oliver Bearman’s crash.
“There’s the racing point of view, and honestly, some of the racing, I didn’t even want to overtake Lewis,” he admitted, “it’s just the battery deploys when I don’t want it to deploy, and I can’t control it. So, I overtake him, and then I have no battery, so he just flies past.
“This is not racing,” insisted the McLaren driver. “This yo-yoing, even if he says it’s not.”
In fact, a number of drivers have echoed Norris’ claim of ‘overtaking by accident’.
“When you are at the mercy of what the power unit delivers, the drivers should be in control of it, at least, and we’re not,” said Norris.
“Of course, there have been some better tracks, some worse tracks, they made some improvements – it can still be further improved. We just want to go flat-out,” he insisted. “I don’t want to be lifting here and losing 60kph from 130R to the last corner. Most other categories will have a higher top speed than us.
“Some things can be improved, but the FIA knows that,” he added. “I hope they can do it.
“Yes, the racing can look great on TV, but the racing inside the car is certainly not as authentic as it should be.”
The McLaren driver then described an experience in 130R.
“It’s normally in overtake mode,” he said. “The problem is it deploys into 130R, I have to lift or else I’ll drive into him. I’m not allowed to go back on throttle, when I go back on throttle, my battery deploys and I don’t want it to because it should have cut. But because you lift and you have to go back on, it redeploys. There’s nothing I can do about it.
“There’s just not enough control for the driver, and that’s why you’re just too much at the mercy of what’s behind you. That’s just not how it should be.”
Ironically, one of the directors of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA), the drivers’ union if you will, is George Russell – the other being Carlos Sainz – but the Briton, who won the opening race of the season and is currently second in the standings behind his Mercedes teammate, has given his full support to the regulations.
“It doesn’t matter what we say,” said Norris. “Because as long as the fans enjoy it, that’s all that matters.”