The reigning world champion had already exhausted his permitted allocation following several reliability failures during the opening nine rounds of the season.
McLaren chose to take the penalty at Spa-Francorchamps because its long straights and overtaking opportunities should give Norris a better chance of recovering than at the upcoming races in Hungary and the Netherlands.
“[This weekend] certainly won’t be made easier by the grid penalty,” Norris said during Thursday’s media day in Belgium.
“That’s just because I’ve been unlucky in the first part of the season losing a lot of different bits, whether it was the engine or the power unit or the controls – whatever it’s been.
“I’m on the back foot from a spare parts point of view but that’s out of my hands, and out of our hands in some ways. So that’s life.
“[I’ve] just got to take it on the chin and deal with some of the penalties that I have coming up, but this is certainly a better track to take the penalties than the next two.
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“It’s part of it, but we can still look forward to try and have a good weekend.”
Norris lost his first power electronics unit when a terminal failure prevented him from starting the Chinese Grand Prix.
A second unit encountered problems during practice in Japan and was withdrawn for repairs, forcing McLaren to move Norris onto the third and final component within his permitted allocation.
The repaired Japanese unit then suffered another terminal issue during second practice in Monaco, making a grid penalty effectively unavoidable later in the season.
Mercedes has since introduced reliability fixes for its power electronics system, prompting McLaren to fit Norris with the upgraded fourth unit in Belgium.
“We have chosen to do this in Belgium, a circuit where overtaking is relatively more prevalent, as opposed to the following two events in Hungary and Zandvoort,” McLaren said in a statement.
“We now plan to use this fourth power electronics unit for the remainder of the season, in order to maximise reliability while minimising sporting penalties on Lando.”
The new component forms part of a wider Mercedes power unit upgrade that will be introduced on both McLaren cars at Spa.
George Russell and Kimi Antonelli debuted the revised specification for Mercedes in Austria before Alpine and Williams adopted it at Silverstone.
McLaren delayed its switch because its existing engines still had usable mileage remaining, but Norris and Oscar Piastri will now receive the latest package in Belgium.
Piastri will move onto his third power electronics unit and therefore avoid a penalty, while Norris will drop 10 places from wherever he qualifies.
McLaren has also brought a revised rear wing to Spa, although Norris played down the performance gain expected from the component.
“The rear wing that we have this weekend, it’s a very, very small step – probably not even a tenth of a second. Not even half a tenth maybe,” he said.
“We’re talking small numbers and hopefully the upgrades we can have in Budapest and into Zandvoort can help us maybe accelerate that progression.”
Norris enters the Belgian Grand Prix fifth in the drivers’ championship with 97 points after nine rounds, with his only victory of the season coming in the Miami sprint.
McLaren sits third in the constructors’ standings behind Mercedes and Ferrari as it continues to search for its first grand prix victory of the 2026 season.
2026 F1 Belgian Grand Prix – Schedule, how to watch, TV times & more
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