RacingMcLaren thinks Formula 1’s forced five-week pause has landed at exactly the right moment. After a rough start to 2026, Andrea Stella says the team now knows where the MCL40 is leaving performance on the table, and he expects that work on both the car and the Mercedes power unit can push McLaren closer to Mercedes and Ferrari by Miami.
Speaking in Japan, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the team has a clear read on the car’s strengths and weaknesses. “The MCL40 is a very high-potential platform,” Stella, McLaren team principal, said in Japan. He added that the car “suffers a bit of a deficit in grip,” and said Ferrari and Mercedes were “faster than us in the corners.” Stella also said in Japan that McLaren is “probably under-exploiting the power unit a little bit” compared with Mercedes.
That has shaped McLaren’s plan for the break created by the cancelled Bahrain Grand Prix and postponed Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. Stella said to media including RacingNews365 during the April hiatus that the time off came “for the wrong reasons,” but that “this pause is welcomed” after a packed start to the year. He said McLaren can now “make the parts that we want to take trackside to evolve our car, make it faster,” with the biggest push aimed at aerodynamic performance.
Stella also said to media including RacingNews365 during the April hiatus that the team is using the gap to improve how it works with the new Mercedes package. McLaren is, in his words, “on a steep learning curve” with the power unit, and he said the team is working with Mercedes High-Performance Powertrains “to make sure that we get on top of all the potential, extracting all the potential that is available in the power unit.” On the chassis side, Stella said in Japan that McLaren “understand[s] exactly what to do” and that upgrades to improve aerodynamic efficiency “will happen in the next couple of events.”
The timing matters because McLaren’s points haul has not reflected its pace. The team had only one car start across the first two race weekends, after Oscar Piastri crashed on the reconnaissance lap in Australia and technical issues stopped both Piastri and Lando Norris from starting in China, according to the season recap in the source material. Suzuka finally showed more of what the car can do. Piastri took the lead at the start and finished second after the Safety Car turned the race against him, while Norris came home fifth.
Stella said in Japan that Suzuka backed up McLaren’s belief that the car has much more to give. “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,” Stella, McLaren team principal, said in Japan.
Piastri sees it the same way. In comments about his season, McLaren driver Oscar Piastri said his view is now “more encouraging” because missing the starts of the first two races cost the team “significant and essential learning time.” He said Suzuka was “one of my best weekends,” and added that it showed “when we get the start, we are actually pretty good!”
The break is also giving McLaren’s staff room to recover. Stella said to media including RacingNews365 during the April hiatus that the team has come through “one of the most intense winters that I can remember in my career in Formula 1,” and that the extra time lets people “take a little bit of a breath.” For McLaren, that reset now comes with a chance to turn a difficult opening into something much stronger when the season resumes in Miami.