The team, coming in to the 2025 campaign as reigning champions, turned heads in Bahrain, especially after Norris’ impressive long-run pace on the second day. But he believes people are reading too much into testing and that teams are deliberately downplaying their true speed before the first race in Australia.

“I know there’s a lot of expectation and that’s what everyone says,” said Norris, quoted by RacingNews365.

“My one race run I did just made everyone believe this quite heavily. It was a good race run, but it was also in the most perfect conditions. Oscar [Piastri] did a race run the next day that was a lot slower, not because he drove worse, but simply because the conditions on the final day were considerably slower.”

He was surprised by how many people were jumping to conclusions, adding: “Everyone just wants to play that game of looking like the underdog and playing it down.”

This season is expected to be a tight battle, with four different teams winning races last year. While some see McLaren as the early favorite, Norris thinks Ferrari could be a big surprise in Melbourne.

“We just focus on ourselves,” he said.

“It’s nice that people are thinking about us. It’s great publicity, but it makes no difference. If I go out and do a bad job this weekend, who cares what people have said in the past?”

He also doesn’t believe McLaren is ahead of the competition as much as people think. “I know how much fuel and stuff Ferrari had for a lot of the testing. You’ll be surprised at how quick they are going to be this weekend,” he hinted.

“People can talk what they want. I think for us, we’ve kept to ourselves. We kept focused. We want to be quick, we expect to be up there fighting, but I definitely don’t think by the margin that everyone is saying.”