Andrea Stella reveals McLaren knows exactly how to unlock MCL40 potential

McLaren’s Andrea Stella said he believes the full potential of the MCL40 is yet to be unlocked, but his team knows exactly what to do to improve its competitiveness.

McLaren had a slow start to the F1 2026 season, but showed that it can be a contender this year as Oscar Piastri fought for the win at the Japanese Grand Prix.

Andrea Stella says McLaren can unlock MCL40 potential

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McLaren only had a single car start over the first two race weekends, as Piastri crashed out on a reconnaissance lap in Australia, and technical issues affecting both cars before the Chinese Grand Prix meant neither him nor Lando Norris started the race.

However, in Japan, Piastri snatched the lead at the start and looked set to take victory over Mercedes’ George Russell, before a Safety Car intervention at an inopportune moment meant he and Russell slipped back behind Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli and gave the Italian his second consecutive victory.

But the Suzuka race underlined that McLaren already appears to have the pace to be a contender in the championship as Norris, despite having a quieter weekend than Piastri, managed fifth place to make it a competitive weekend all round for the Woking-based squad.

McLaren had switched off development of last year’s MCL39 at an early point in the season in order to concentrate on the new regulations, and team boss Andrea Stella said he believes his squad can go on an upward trajectory when the championship resumes in Miami.

“The MCL40 is a very high-potential platform,” he said in Japan.

“At the moment, our car, when we compare it to Ferrari and Mercedes, suffers a bit of a deficit in grip.

“So Ferrari and Mercedes are faster than us in the corners. I think compared to Mercedes, we see that we are probably under-exploiting the power unit a little bit.”

Stella has previously been open about needing to develop a greater understanding of the Mercedes High-Performance Powertrains [HPP] power unit, an area in which the factory team would have had an initial advantage, and the Italian reckons the improvement in Japan was down to better exploitation of the new unit.

“We are on a steep learning curve when it comes to getting the most out of the power unit, which is positive,” he said.

“We are working with HPP to make sure that we get on top of all the potential, extracting all the potential that is available in the power unit.

“But, coming back to the chassis side, we understand exactly what to do in terms of putting in place the actions to improve the chassis.

“Furthermore, it’s just about bringing upgrades that will increase the aerodynamic efficiency. These will happen in the next couple of events.

“So I think, from there, we should see a positive trajectory, and we are confident that McLaren will be in condition to compete for podiums and victories on merit within the season.”

The unofficial ‘Spring break’ created by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix has meant that Miami will likely see significant upgrade packages for most of the teams making the most of the five-week gap in the calendar, while the FIA is also evaluating, together with team bosses, FOM, and the power unit manufacturers, potential further tweaks to energy management techniques in order to make a more natural dynamic for the new ruleset.

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With these upgrades and potential rule tweaks, Miami could serve as something of a reset, as Mercedes’ Toto Wolff joked that he would have liked the two Middle Eastern races to have remained to allow his team more time to add to its points tally while having a pace advantage as he acknowledged Miami could be a different picture.

“It could well be the case,” he said.

“People have learned now, the teams have learned.

“Drivers are starting to learn how to optimise these systems to their benefit, and we’ve seen that first indication today [Japan], what looked like a home run in the first two races isn’t the case.

“We’ve always warned. Miami is going to be, for me, a restart. How are the upgrades going to work that people are bringing, and how have we optimised all the other systems? It’s going to be exciting.”

The potential for a battle between the two Mercedes-powered teams, with Ferrari also likely to be in the mix, increases in likelihood due to the break allowing for greater understanding to be developed and expedited compared to what had been the original calendar schedule.

But, for Stella, the break is also a welcome reprieve after a punishing start to the season in terms of workload for the track team; the first on-track session was in Barcelona in January, and there hasn’t been any significant break since.

“We have some time off for the wrong reasons,” he said.

“But, having said that, effectively because of having been programmed such an intense programme, quite pushed from a timeline point of view, actually it was welcomed.

“I think, for McLaren as a team, it gives us the possibility to make the parts that we want to take trackside to evolve our car, make it faster, especially when it comes to aerodynamic performance.

“It gives us some more time to work with HPP, for instance, finalising all the tools that are required to exploit, and, importantly, it also gives the staff the time to take a little bit of a breath, because it’s been one of the most intense winters that I can remember in my career in Formula 1.

“Definitely, once we started to go trackside in winter testing itself, it has been very intense, very busy.

“I think it’s good that in what is going to be another long season, we have the time to take a breath and we have the time to catch up from an operational and technical point of view, so that we can be as a team, specifically talking about McLaren, in condition to fight for more important positions once we race back, starting from Miami.”

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