McLaren faces 'reality check' after Canada and Monaco struggles

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes McLaren needs to turn the trajectory of its season around after a reality check of its performance at the Monaco Grand Prix.

In Miami McLaren secured a one-two in the Sprint and fought for victory in the grand prix as upgrades helped it move forward in the pecking order. However, it appeared to struggle for race pace in Canada and was uncompetitive throughout the weekend in Monaco, with Stella highlighting limitations of being a customer team early in the latest set of regulations.

“There's certainly an important reality check that comes from Canada and Monaco,” Stella said. “And the reality check is, first of all, looking at the facts. We have not been fast enough, I would say especially in terms of race pace, in both Canada and here, and we have not been reliable enough.

“When we look at reliability, we have had issues pretty much in all areas of the car. It's not like it's a specific area. [Monaco] it was power unit. We have had other issues with power unit – I would say this has probably been the most important area for reliability – but for Lando in Canada, it was the gearbox.

“So there's a performance assessment, and there is a reliability assessment that we are doing, looking at Canada and looking at Monaco. We understand these reliability issues in isolation. We can fix them. But obviously, when you have so many issues, it may be symptomatic of the fact that the project is still relatively young.

“And like I said before, never before have we felt that being a customer team has put us on the back foot. And when I say this - and I want to be clear here to avoid any misunderstanding - it's not because you are a lower priority for HPP. It's because you have less opportunities to integrate, to stay on the same timeline when it comes to addressing reliability problems or exploitation of the power unit from a performance point of view.

“Combining the efforts when you use the facilities, and you have some experiments on the chassis side that you can add to a long run of the power unit when you are a works team. There's many reasons why reliability associated to power unit, or taking advantage of being a works team from a power unit point of view, I think these reliability issues have made it into 2026, where we had such a large technical regulation change.”

Stella also identifies the last two races as being particularly painful for McLaren based on a lack of overall downforce, with its previous ability to get performance out of its tires without overheating them currently lacking.

“From a performance point of view instead … it’s very clear that we don't have enough grip, mainly because we don't have enough aerodynamic load.” he said. “It's also clear that we are not getting the tires to operate in the window in which they perform at the best. Especially in circuits like [Monaco] and Canada, where the tarmac is extremely smooth, and the tires operate in a particular regime. And this year the tires are relatively stiff, and they need the temperature to operate well.

“So there's a long list. Performance and reliability, we remain, obviously, with the mindset that this could be another 2024, in terms of catching up at the end. But in 2024, our trajectory from reliability and performance was more convincing. So if we want to stay in the championship, we need to have a turnaround.”