Monza has always been simple. Four long straights, a handful of hard braking zones, minimal drag, maximum commitment. For more than 70 years, the Italian Grand Prix has rewarded outright power and bravery. The 2026 Formula 1 season has complicated that simplicity.
As the paddock arrived at the Autodromo Nazionale for the Italian Grand Prix, McLaren brought two very different headlines with it. On one side, a technical reality check from Oscar Piastri about what the new power units can and cannot do at the Temple of Speed. On the other, clarity from Lando Norris about his long-term future and his place in Formula 1’s financial hierarchy.
Both stories, told in the drivers’ own words, explain where Formula 1 stands nine months into its biggest technical reset in a decade.
The 2026 Power Unit: Built Around The Battery
To understand Monza in 2026, you have to understand the new power unit.
The regulations introduced this year removed the MGU-H, increased the electrical power of the MGU-K to 350 kW, and mandated 100% sustainable fuel. The target was a near 50-50 split between combustion and electric power. In practice, that has made energy management the central performance differentiator.
A driver no longer just has fuel to manage. He has a battery state, a deployment map, a harvest target, and an override mode. The MGU-K can recover kinetic energy under braking, but it can also recover energy while the driver is still at full throttle. That second phenomenon has become one of the defining talking points of the year.
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It is called super-clipping. When the MGU-K harvests on the straight, it creates negative torque. The car is effectively braking while accelerating. The engine is still pushing, but the generator is pulling. The result is a car that loses speed at the end of a straight, not because it has hit its aerodynamic limit, but because it is being asked to recharge itself.
On most circuits this is manageable. At Monza, it is fundamental.
The Monza Problem: No Place to Harvest, No Energy to Spend
Monza’s layout is an outlier in 2026. It has four prolonged full-throttle sections, but only three heavy braking events where significant energy can be recovered: Turn 1, the Roggia chicane, and Ascari. The Lesmos and Parabolica are too fast to harvest much.
If the FIA allowed a high harvest limit here, teams would be forced to harvest for almost the entire straight to refill the battery. Drivers would spend seconds per lap super-clipping, dropping 30 to 40 km/h before the braking zone. It would look strange, feel unnatural to drive, and reward lift-and-coast tactics that neither fans nor the sport want.
To avoid that, the FIA has introduced a circuit-specific harvest cap. For 2026, Monza sits at the bottom of that table at 5 MJ per lap. Compare that to Monaco or the Hungaroring, where the cap is close to 9 MJ. On those twisty, braking-heavy tracks, you can recover a lot without ever needing to harvest on throttle. At Monza, you cannot.
This is the paradox Piastri described so precisely on Thursday in Monza:
“At a circuit like this, you’ve got a problem no matter which direction you go. If the harvest limit was higher, we would be super clipping everywhere and probably losing 30 or 40 km/h at the end of each straight. But the drop to the harvest limit, which means the super clipping is a normal-ish amount, or a reasonable amount, it’s still there. Obviously you then don’t have as much energy to spend on the straights, so the actual top speed is quite low. So we’ll wait and see what top speeds we get. In our sim running,
I think we were actually quicker on the front straight in Hungary than we were here, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it’s more that we just don’t have the energy to spend. But again, if you gave us the energy to spend, we then don’t have anywhere to harvest it, so you run into a problem no matter which way you go. For me, I think this is the correct direction to go in and have a sensible amount of super clipping.”
That last line matters. Piastri is not criticizing the rule. He is endorsing it as the least bad option.
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For context, how strange is his claim? At the Hungaroring, a circuit known for being tight, twisty and reliant on mechanical grip, the main straight is just over 700 meters long. At Monza, the pit straight alone is more than a kilometer if you count the run from Parabolica to the first chicane, and the run from Lesmo to Ascari is almost flat-out for 15 seconds.
Historically, Monza has produced the highest trap speeds of the year, often over 355-360 km/h in the hybrid era, and over 370 km/h in the V10 era. Hungary has traditionally been 20-25 km/h slower.
McLaren’s simulator, according to both Piastri and Team Principal Andrea Stella, showed the opposite for 2026 qualifying trim. The peak speed at the end of the Hungaroring main straight was higher than the peak at the end of Monza’s main straight.
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The physics explains it. In Hungary, you arrive on the straight with a full battery because you have just had three heavy braking zones in quick succession. You can deploy 350 kW of electrical power for almost the entire length of the straight. In Monza, you arrive with less energy and you exhaust it early. After about 60-70% of the straight, the battery is empty. From there, you are running on the internal combustion engine alone, roughly 400 kW, pushing against drag that is still high even in low-drag trim. The car stops accelerating. Sometimes it even decelerates slightly.
Stella put it bluntly in the team briefing: you are on full throttle for a larger percentage of the lap at Monza than at any other circuit, but your straight-line speed in qualifying could be lower than in Hungary. It is counter-intuitive until you see the energy trace.
This is not a McLaren-specific issue. Every Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull Powertrains and Audi power unit faces the same trade-off. Early practice timing at Monza confirmed it, with trap speeds down by more than 15 km/h compared to 2025, despite cars carrying significantly less drag.
Why the FIA Chose 5 MJ and What It Means for Racing
The FIA and Formula 1 could have left the harvest limit high and let teams deal with super-clipping. They actively chose not to.
The reasoning is sporting. Extreme super-clipping creates what engineers call yo-yo racing. The order of the cars on a straight is dictated less by slipstream and DRS and more by who has more battery left. A driver who harvested aggressively for two laps can then blast past on the third, only to be re-passed when his state of charge collapses. It produces overtakes, but not necessarily racing that rewards driver skill.
By capping Monza at 5 MJ, the FIA forces a more consistent deployment profile. There is still super-clipping, Piastri notes, but a “reasonable amount.” The compromise is lower top speed. The cars will still be fast through Curva Grande and Lesmo, still demanding on entry to the chicanes, but the raw velocity that defined Monza for generations is tempered.
From a racecraft perspective, this creates new strategic layers. Teams have to decide where to spend their limited 5 MJ. Do you use more to defend into Turn 1, or save for the run to Roggia? Do you use an aggressive override mode to pass and accept you will be vulnerable for the next two laps? The opening laps, when everyone starts with a full battery and different deployment philosophies, are expected to be volatile. Piastri himself predicted chaos.
For spectators, it will look different. You will not see 360 km/h on the speed trap. You will see cars accelerating hard, plateauing, then braking earlier than you expect. It is less spectacular on paper, but potentially more unpredictable over a race distance.
McLaren’s Answer: The H-Wing
Monza is also a development race. Because drag efficiency is so critical here, teams bring circuit-specific rear wings.
McLaren brought a concept it has internally called the H-wing. It is an evolution of the active aerodynamics allowed under the 2026 rules. All cars now have active front and rear elements that switch between corner mode and straight mode. McLaren’s solution appears to allow the entire upper rear wing plane to pivot and rotate to a deeper stall position, shedding more drag than a simple flap opening.
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The advantage of active aero is that you can afford to run more downforce in the corners than you would have in the past. When you hit the straight, you dump that downforce more efficiently. Stella explained that this is why teams are not running the ultra-skinny wings of 2022-2025. The straight-mode is so effective that you can carry a medium-downforce wing and still be low-drag on the straight.
Even so, at Monza, no wing design can overcome an empty battery. The H-wing will help McLaren in the corners and in the early phase of each straight when electrical power is still available. Once the energy is gone, everyone is in the same position, reliant on combustion efficiency and drag. The Mercedes power unit, which McLaren uses, is believed to have a slight combustion efficiency edge over some rivals, which could be decisive when electrical assistance drops out.
The Other McLaren Story: Norris Until 2030
While the technical conversation was about energy, the commercial conversation was about continuity.
McLaren announced ahead of Monza that Lando Norris has extended his contract until at least the end of 2030. The announcement was made not in a press release, but at a family and friends event at the McLaren Technology Centre in Woking, which reflects the relationship Norris has with the team.
If he completes the deal, it will be 12 seasons with one team, from his debut in 2019 to 2030. In modern Formula 1, that kind of longevity is rare. Norris lived through McLaren’s difficult midfield years, chose not to pursue options elsewhere when the car was not competitive, and was rewarded with a car capable of winning both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championships in 2025.
His comments on that decision were telling:
“I’ve stuck with McLaren through times when there was the opportunity in the past to go elsewhere. I was very happy to stay where I obviously felt very comfortable. I still believed through the harder periods of McLaren, in the earlier years, that what we achieved over the last few years was possible. And obviously all of that came true.”
For team principal Andrea Stella, the extension is both sporting and cultural. His description of Norris was deliberate: “an exceptional driver, someone who combines outstanding natural speed with maturity, consistency and a strong commitment to McLaren, but above all, he is a special human being who is valued by everyone in the team.” In a team that has worked hard to rebuild its internal culture after 2018-2020, that human element is not PR. It is part of the performance model.
Money, Merit, and Perspective
As with any top driver deal, speculation immediately turned to salary. Online reports placed Norris’s new deal on parity with Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, with figures as high as £50-60 million per year circulating.
Norris addressed it directly in the Monza media pen, with a mix of honesty and humour that has become his trademark:
“I mean, I feel I should earn as much as them, but it is certainly not close to the figures that I’ve been seeing online, sadly! Of course, it is a bit more [than the last deal], as it is with any job when you extend. But it’s certainly not close to the level of Lewis or Max. Which, in a way, it shouldn’t be because I’ve not achieved as much as what they’ve achieved in their careers. But in another way, I believe it should be, because I believe I can fight against them whenever I need to, and I can do a better job whenever I need to. So yeah, I guess I have two opinions on it.”
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That duality is mature. Verstappen has four world championships. Hamilton has seven. Their contracts reflect not just current pace, but historical achievement, global commercial value, and scarcity. Norris has one world championship, won in 2025. His base salary is reliably understood to be in the region of £30 million per season, before bonuses and personal endorsements. That places him in the top three to four earners on the grid, ahead of most, but not at the very top tier occupied by Verstappen at Red Bull and Hamilton at Ferrari.
He does not dispute that hierarchy, but he also does not accept inferiority on track. “I believe I can fight against them whenever I need to” is not arrogance. It is the mindset required to lead a team that expects to fight for championships every year.
This transparency is useful for understanding modern F1 contracts. The headline number is rarely the full story. Performance bonuses for championships, points, and wins, plus allowances for image rights and personal sponsors, can add significantly. McLaren, as a team that is profitable but not backed by an automotive giant in the same way as Ferrari or Mercedes, structures deals differently. Norris’s value to McLaren is also commercial: he is the team’s most marketable asset and central to its sponsor proposition.
Why These Two Stories Belong Together
On the surface, energy harvesting and contract negotiations have nothing in common. Inside McLaren, they are linked by the same theme: managing finite resources in a sport that is redefining what performance means.
The 2026 regulations ask teams to be more efficient. You cannot just burn more fuel or deploy more electrical energy whenever you want. You have a capped budget per lap, and you have to be smart about where you spend it. The same is true of a team budget cap and a driver market. You have a finite salary budget, finite wind tunnel time, finite people. You choose to invest in continuity with a driver you know and trust, rather than chase a headline name.
For McLaren, Monza will be a test of both investments. On track, the H-wing and the Mercedes power unit will be tested against the reality of the 5 MJ limit. The data gathered in practice and the race will feed directly into development for 2027, when the power unit regulations will be further refined based on this year’s learnings.
Off track, the Norris extension gives the team stability to plan its next chassis around a known quantity. Piastri, whose own contract runs long-term as well, forms the other half of a pairing that has already delivered consecutive constructors’ titles and is currently leading both championships in 2026.
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Monza will not be the fastest Formula 1 has ever been. The speed trap will be lower, the lap times slightly slower than last year’s record, and the sound of lift-and-coast will be noticeable. It will, however, be one of the most tactically complex Italian Grands Prix in recent memory, because speed is no longer just about drag and power. It is about when you choose to use what you have.
That is the real shift Piastri identified in the simulator. The Temple of Speed is still about speed, but speed is now defined by energy state as much as by aerodynamics. McLaren, with one eye on the stopwatch and the other on the next five years, appears comfortable with that new definition.
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