Racing
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Even as Goodwood celebrated Lando Norris’s 2025 Formula 1 title, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella made clear the reigning champions cannot dwell on it, with a difficult start to 2026 leaving the team 154 points behind Mercedes and still searching for its first win of the season.
Speaking on the official Goodwood broadcast, Stella said Formula 1 success brings its own pressure to move on quickly. “The past is the past, but it's an incredible past. It's almost career- and life-defining, if you want,” he said. But he added that there is “a little bit of a curse” in F1 because teams are “always looking to the future,” with McLaren now trying to put itself “in a position very soon to repeat these kinds of results and see Lando and Oscar succeed, and then fight again for the world championship.”
That urgency reflects how sharply McLaren’s position has changed under the new regulations. Stella said the team had gone from being “almost last” at the start of 2023 to ending 2025 with both world titles, with Norris clinching his first drivers’ championship at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after a season-long fight with team-mate Oscar Piastri and a second-half challenge from Max Verstappen.
Instead of building on that momentum, McLaren has struggled to adapt in 2026. Stella said the team has been adrift of Mercedes and often Ferrari across the opening nine rounds, has yet to win a race, and has suffered four power-unit-related problems that prevented its cars from starting or finishing races.
McLaren’s response is now centered on development. After the British Grand Prix, Stella said update packages will arrive before and after the summer break as the team tries to close the gap. He said McLaren now has a much clearer idea of the aerodynamic direction it needs to follow with the MCL40 and that its “ideal scenario” is to reduce the deficit with that next sequence of upgrades.
Stella said aerodynamic development is now the central performance factor in Formula 1, with less lap time available through mechanical setup or how the car is operated close to the ground. McLaren believes the progress in that area is becoming more consistent than at some points last year, and is banking on another package of improvements to bring it closer to the front.
The scale of the job was visible at Silverstone. Norris finished third in the Sprint and fourth in the Grand Prix, while Piastri ended up 11th after a first-lap clash with Liam Lawson, leaving McLaren needing its upcoming upgrades to change the direction of a season that has opened with the team chasing rather than defending.