Change of the guard
No more papaya-colored parades, one-two finishes, and discussions about driver rules of engagement. With the advent of the new technical regulations, the supremacy that McLaren had imposed on the Circus over the last year and a half, winning two consecutive Constructors’ titles and winning the 2025 Drivers’ world championship with Lando Norris, has disappeared. The Woking team is still in a battle with Red Bull, but this time the duel concerns the role of third-fourth force on the grid. Mercedes, but also Ferrari, are much further ahead.
Many problems to solve
Andrea Stella can only take note of this, as at the end of the Melbourne race he commented to Sky Sport F1 on what happened in the first GP of the season. A Sunday that started very badly for McLaren, with the accident that took Oscar Piastri out even before the start: “It was important to finish the race – declared the McLaren team principal – but we only finished with one driver. Unfortunately for Oscar, there was a problem on the formation lap: while he was going over the curb, the power unit behaved in a somewhat unexpected way and this caused the spin. With Norris we finished the race and that’s important, but we finished 50 seconds behind the leader“.
Read more McLaren seeks redemption in China: “We are working to better exploit the engine”
“We know there is performance we need to find – the Italian manager added – and that there is performance in the way we use the power unit. Looking at the data and looking at the speed comparison with Mercedes, clearly they are doing a better job than us in using the power unit. There is also performance to be found in the corners, because at the moment we don’t have enough downforce, so the objectives are clear. Graining? In this race I would say that the hard tires strangely had more graining than the medium tires and we maintained in 2026 a trend we also had in the past; when there is graining in the front tires we tend to have a little more than the others”, he concluded Stella.
