Lando Norris Admits Fussy McLaren Cockpit Demand

Lando Norris admitted that he and Oscar Piastri are quite fussy about what they can see from the cockpit of the McLaren MCL40, as the Woking-based team runs a special livery for the British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

McLaren has moved away from its iconic papaya for this weekend and adopted a white and British Racing Green colour scheme. The one-off design pays tribute to Bruce McLaren and the 1966 M2B, the first car built and raced in Formula 1 by the team's founder.

The livery also references the moment Bruce McLaren scored the team's first Formula 1 point at the British Grand Prix in the same year. From a driver's perspective, however, Norris stressed that external visual changes are not automatically obvious from inside the car because the area around the cockpit is often kept familiar.

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"Actually, both me and Oscar are pretty fussy with visually what we see as drivers," Norris said.

"So actually what we have around the cockpit quite often stays the same. So when you're inside the car, we don't actually notice too many changes from the outside," Norris added.

That comment places McLaren's special livery in a narrower technical context. Colours and historical identity can change for the team's visual programme, but cockpit references remain a sensitive area because they are directly linked to focus, sightlines and driver consistency during competitive sessions.

"It's special. We always obviously try and do special things, but it's special because it's Bruce's first car," Norris said.

On performance, both MCL40s showed solid pace on Friday. Piastri finished fifth and Norris seventh in practice before the pair qualified sixth and seventh respectively for the Sprint, keeping McLaren in the competitive group even if it did not set the benchmark at Silverstone.