McLaren under pressure: Talks with Mercedes aim to spark a turnaround

McLaren got a major reality check in Monaco, team boss Andrea Stella confirms: the cars of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are not fast enough and there are many technical problems. “When we look at reliability, we’ve had issues in pretty much every area of the car,” Stella explained after the Monaco Grand Prix, in which Lando Norris retired with a power unit problem.

Stella believes the problems can be solved, and there is a lot of confidence in the engine partner. He emphasized that the relationship with Mercedes HPP is still excellent: "Like never before have we felt that being a customer team has put us on the back foot. And when I say this, I want to be clear here to avoid any misunderstanding, it's not because you are a lower priority for HPP."

However, Stella also explained the complexity of the collaboration: "I just want to be totally fair to our power unit supplier, with whom we have had a fantastic relationship, a very successful one. And still, the relationship is great. The great relationship allows us to review item by item, learn from each item, and solve it technically. But when you don't know what's coming, it's not sufficient to simply address item by item."

That’s why McLaren and Mercedes HPP are working on a different way of, for example, shaping all processes and sharing available information more effectively, so McLaren can think further ahead and anticipate what’s coming: "It's a wider review in terms of what we have to analyse. Because in 2026, there's so much novelty, there's so many new things, and we kind of have to operate at a new level of collaboration compared to what we were doing before. These conversations have already started for some months now, but like everything in Formula 1, there's always a lead time. It's not like you see the effect the day after you instigate it. So this is already happening and is relatively wide as a conversation."

In the meantime, Lando Norris’s deficit to Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the championship is almost one hundred points. The reigning champion still believes in defending his title, as he said in Monaco in response to a question from GPblog. That won’t be easy, Stella realized.

The Italian pointed out another challenge for McLaren: "It's very clear that we don't have enough grip, mainly because we don't have enough aerodynamic load. It's also clear that we are not getting the tyres to operate in the window in which they perform at their best, especially at circuits like here in Canada, where the tarmac is extremely smooth and the tyres operate in a particular regime. This year, the tyres are relatively stiff and they need temperature to operate well.