(Motorsport-Total.com) – McLaren’s double podium in Miami seemed, much like two years ago, to mark the beginning of an upward trend. In Montreal, the racing team then introduced the second part of its Miami upgrade package, but progress has not been linear since then.
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Lando Norris retired in both Montreal and Monaco due to power unit and gearbox issues, while in the principality, there was also a lack of pure pace.
The reigning world champion lost valuable track time on Friday due to another power unit problem, while at least Oscar Piastri was able to complete a full program. Nevertheless, McLaren lacked the pace throughout the weekend to seriously contend for the top spots.
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“There is definitely an important reality check from Canada and Monaco,” says McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella. “And this reality check primarily means facing the facts. We were not fast enough, I would say, especially in terms of race pace.”
“And in both Canada and here, we were not reliable enough. If we look at reliability, we had problems in pretty much all areas of the car,” he admits.
“It’s not that it’s a specific area. Today it was the power unit, and we’ve had other power unit problems before. I would say that was probably the most critical area for reliability, but for Lando in Canada, it was the gearbox.”
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This means McLaren has work to do on both fronts. The reliability issues must be quickly resolved in cooperation with Mercedes HPP, while at the same time more pure pace is needed.
“So we are conducting a performance assessment and a reliability assessment. Looking at Canada and Monaco, we understand these reliability issues in isolation. We can fix them. But when you have so many problems, it’s obviously a symptom that the project is still relatively young.”
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Is a turnaround like 2024 still possible for McLaren?
When it comes to McLaren’s performance deficit, Stella sees two main problems. Firstly, the Monaco Grand Prix showed that McLaren simply lacks downforce on high-downforce tracks like Monaco. Secondly, this also affects Pirelli’s 2026 tires.
“From a performance perspective, I already said yesterday that it’s very clear we don’t have enough grip, mainly because we lack aerodynamic downforce,” Stella continues.
“And it’s also clear that we’re not getting the tires to work in the window where they perform best – especially on tracks like here and in Canada, where the asphalt is extremely smooth and the tires operate in a very specific range.”
The latter is not only due to the McLaren car itself, but also to the new tires introduced for this season. Since Pirelli relied on widely differing simulations from the teams, they acted somewhat conservatively in some respects.
Above all, the tires must be able to handle the downforce values predicted for Abu Dhabi and were developed with that in mind. However, this means that they may still be a bit too robust for the early part of the season, especially for teams that lacked downforce compared to the competition.
“This year, the tires are relatively stiff and they need temperature to work well,” Stella admits. “So there’s a long list, both in terms of performance and reliability.”
“We naturally maintain the mindset that this could be another 2024 in terms of catching up at the end. But in 2024, our development in terms of reliability and performance was more convincing. So if we want to stay in the fight for the world championship, we need to make a turnaround.”