McLaren issues title warning with ‘important reality check’ admission
The McLaren duo is currently lagging behind the championship leaders.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the most recent races have been an “important reality check” on the team’s championship aspirations, admitting “we need to have a turnaround” for a chance of success.
Lando Norris has not finished in back-to-back races, while championship leaders Mercedes hold more than twice McLaren’s points tally in the Constructors’ standings at this early stage.
McLaren acknowledges ‘we have not been fast enough’ as title bid stumbles
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McLaren appeared to be the fourth-fastest team in Monaco at the weekend and, while Oscar Piastri rose to fourth come the chequered flag on Sunday, Stella acknowledged the team is still lagging behind its frontrunning rivals.
Stella expanded on the issues facing McLaren, with a lack of grip and aerodynamic load costing the reigning champions as the team looks to retain either title.
That said, while Stella is looking for a 2024-style turnaround in fortune from McLaren, he conceded the team sat on a fairer footing than this time around.
“There’s certainly an important reality check that comes from Canada and Monaco,” Stella told PlanetF1.com and others after the Monaco Grand Prix.
“First of all, looking at the facts, we have not been fast enough, and I would say especially in terms of race pace in both Canada and here, and we have not been reliable enough, and when we look at reliability, we have had issues pretty much in all areas of the car, it’s not like it’s a specific area.
“[In Monaco] it was power unit. We have had other issues with the power unit. I would say this has probably been the most important area for reliability, but for Lando in Canada, it was the gearbox. There’s a performance assessment, and there is a reliability assessment that we are doing, looking at Canada and looking at Monaco.
“We understand these reliability issues in isolation, we can fix them, but obviously when you have so many issues, it may be symptomatic of the fact that the project is still relatively young.
“Like I’ve said before, like never before, have we felt that being a customer team has put us on the back foot. When I say this, and I want to be clear here to avoid any misunderstanding, it’s not because you are a lower priority for HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains], it’s because you have less opportunities to integrate, to stay on the same timeline when it comes to addressing reliability problems or exploitation of the power unit from a performance point of view, combining the efforts when you use the facilities and you have some experiments on the chassis side that you can add to a long run of the power unit when you are a works team.
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“There’s many reasons why reliability associated to the power unit or taking advantage of being a works team from a power unit point of view.
“I think these reliability issues have made it into 2026 where we had such large technical regulation changes.
“From a performance point of view instead, it’s very clear that we don’t have enough grip, mainly because we don’t have enough aerodynamic load, and it’s also clear that we are not getting the tyres to operate in the window in which they perform at the best, especially in circuits like here and Canada, where the tarmac is extremely smooth and the tyres operate in a particular regime.
“This year the tyres, they’re relatively stiff, and they need the temperature to operate well. So, there’s a long list: performance and reliability.
“We remain obviously with the mindset that this could be another 2024 in terms of catching up at the end, but in 2024 our trajectory from a reliability and performance was more convincing. So, if you want to stay in the championship, we need to have a turnaround.”
Additional reporting by Thomas Maher
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