Friday in Suzuka showed signs of progress for the reigning world champions.
Can McLaren get back in the game after a difficult start to the 2026 Formula 1 season? The first two races in Australia and China saw the reigning world champions not only lag behind Mercedes and Ferrari on pure performance, but also make only one start in four attempts, with Oscar Piastri crashing before the start in Melbourne, then both cars suffering pre-race Mercedes battery issues in Shanghai.
Their Suzuka weekend has certainly gotten off to a good start. Piastri led FP2 on Friday, albeit by the slender margin of less than a tenth of a second. The real picture will be more apparent after qualifying on Saturday, but at least for now, there can be some optimism in the camp even after Norris lost valuable track time with hydraulic issues.Mercedes is ahead in two key areas. The works team clearly has a superior chassis package, helped by the fact that it could switch its RD focus to 2026 earlier last year as it wasn’t in a title fight. Second, its works status gave it a huge advantage in terms of early knowledge of how the new power unit worked, which McLaren—as a customer—has had to find out for itself. Ferrari has also snuck ahead.However, team boss Andrea Stella believes that McLaren can turn things around. “I think the MCL40 is a very high potential platform,” he says of the chassis package. “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. We understand exactly what to do in terms of putting in place the actions to improve the chassis furthermore. In fact, 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 this season.”Learning about the power unit is the other part of the story. 'I think,' Seidl said, 'compared to Mercedes GP we see that we are probably underexploiting the power unit a little bit. It was better in China compared to Australia. We are on a steep learning curve when it comes to getting the most out of the power unit, which is positive.”The huge rules reset for 2026 was always going to have winners and losers, and McLaren had more to lose than most, having had the strongest package for most of 2024 and 2025. Had the regs not changed, the team could have been set for a stretch of success similar to those enjoyed by Ferrari , Red Bull , Mercedes and Red Bull again . Instead, having done so well to hone a winning package under the old rules, the team has slid down a snake, and now has to climb a ladder again.“I think we knew it was going to be a massive reset of everything,” says Piastri when asked by Road Track about that lack of continuity. “Maybe not quite as big as it has been. I don't think we thought it would be a pretty fundamental overhaul of what driving a race car looks like! But yeah, I think we knew that this was a possibility.”Piastri admits that it’s been a difficult few months for the team as reality hit home. “We're still towards the front; it’s certainly not a complete disaster. Are we where we want to be? No, but I think we're understanding all the time how we can improve across so many areas. I think that's the biggest thing. It's not like we have one problem that we need to fix, or anything like that. It's a little bit in a few different areas, and that adds up pretty quickly. Would I have loved to have stayed in last year's car at this point? Yes, probably. But it is what it is.”Expanding on the weaknesses relative to Mercedes, Piastri says: “There's nothing magical. I think they just have probably more downforce. They're getting using the power unit probably a bit better than us at the moment. And it's as simple as that, really. There's not really one area where we're weak, or one area that we're strong in. It's just a bit across the board. So I think just finding more downforce is our main opportunity.”While Piastri may be thinking his chance might not come again for a while, Norris at least has the satisfaction of having won last year and bagged a title before the rule change moved the goalposts.“The car has a lot of potential,” says Norris. “We’re certainly not where we wanted to be. The real question you should probably ask is, would I rather be here and have won last year, or would I rather have a slightly better car now and not have won last year? And I think you know what my answer would be. You can’t have the best of everything. As a team we certainly are not where we want to be, and where we desire to be, but I think we all know within the team what we can achieve.”Norris certainly hasn’t given up hope. The season may have lost a couple of events to cancellations, but including Japan, there are still 20 races to go—and there is plenty of opportunity to make progress. Championships are rarely won in March.“I can’t remember how many points we were behind in 2024 from Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari,” says Norris. “But I think we were over 150 points or something behind, and we still managed to come back and win the constructors’ . What we are thinking of is getting on the podium first of all, and then just returning to winning races. The points then take care of themselves, and we’ll see what we can claw back.”There’s certainly every reason to believe that McLaren can win races this year, given the strength that the team has shown over the past couple of years, helped by Stella’s strong management. His glass half-full philosophy has always been that you learn from setbacks and adversity, and that double non-start in China feeds into that.“The way the team has reacted to the frustration of not seeing a McLaren taking part with both cars in the grand prix has been, once again, a way of witnessing the strength of the culture that we have in the team,” he says when asked by RT about the impact. “This is the result of an investment on our people, on our culture, that has been going on for three years. If anything, McLaren, at least since when I’m team principal, right now is in its strongest version as a team.”Stella believes that the team is in a better place than it’s even been: “We have never had this level of capability and infrastructure; we have never had before—even when we were winning championships – this level of expertise and talent in the team. So I think there’s all the reasons to be very encouraged looking at the future. And hopefully, we will start to see some improvements already in the next events.”
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