McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said it became apparent in the early stages of F1 2026 just how “heavy a price” McLaren had paid for its 2025 title double.
But Stella praised his team for the response, which culminated in a transformative upgrade package for the MCL40 as Lando Norris took the win in Hungary. Stella’s comments come after Zak Brown, the McLaren Racing CEO, had noted that it would be a “tough” challenge to “do it all over again” going into F1 2026.
McLaren paid ‘heavy price’ for 2025 glory
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After securing the 2024 Constructors’ crown, McLaren did the double in 2025. McLaren retained the teams’ title. Lando Norris became world champion.
Then came the F1 2026 regulatory overhaul which threatened to shake-up the order. It succeeded. As Mercedes established early dominance, McLaren was forced to get on top of reliability issues, and find a route back to the leading pace.
On the evidence of Hungary, McLaren achieved that. Norris took his first win of the season in an upgraded MCL40 which proved the class of the field at the Hungaroring. This track has been a McLaren stronghold over recent years, but Stella stressed that the upgrades unlocked McLaren’s return to the top.
The journey fills Stella with pride.
“I believe the most important lesson we’ve taken away from these seven months of hard work is that, in times of great difficulty, unity is strength,” said Stella in a new McLaren Q&A.
“We’ve demonstrated, first and foremost to ourselves, just how crucial team cohesion is to bouncing back and getting back on track towards the top.
“After three years of steady progress that saw us win three out of four world titles between 2024 and 2025, the start of this season has been a real reset: not only because the rule changes were probably the most significant ever in the history of this sport, but above all because we realised just how heavy a price we had paid for the effort we put in during 2025 to secure the world double.
“We could have fallen apart; we could have found excuses for not being able to start the championship as we’d finished the previous one, but that wasn’t the case. We tried to understand the technical and strategic reasons, and we focused our efforts. And that makes me truly proud of this team.”
Prior to F1 2026 getting underway, Brown had reflected on McLaren’s title run as “a great accomplishment, because we definitely earned it the hard way.”
Though, in conversation with PlanetF1.com and others, he was under no illusions of the “tough” challenge ahead to stay on top.
“And now we’ve got to do it all over again,” he continued, “and it’ll be tough, because the worst team in Formula 1 is really good.
“So not only the competition of the drivers, the competition of the teams. There’s no more small teams anymore. There’s none of those minnow teams that we all grew up with.
“You know, everyone’s running at the cost cap. The sport is unbelievably healthy and, yeah, it’s been very enjoyable, and looking forward to.”
Stella, when quizzed on the key F1 2026 turning point for McLaren, did not point to one specific moment.
He did, however, speak of the importance of the impromptu April break in this recovery.
No Formula 1 racing took place during April due to the cancellations of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix.
“There wasn’t a single event that changed course; rather, it was a growing awareness of the scale of the challenge we’re facing and the adjustments we needed to make,” said Stella.
“Paradoxically, the enforced break in April probably allowed us to focus entirely on analysing the MCL40’s performance and to fully understand that we needed to redirect or strengthen its development in certain areas of the car.”
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McLaren has also made gains with understanding of the Mercedes power unit, having pointed to a lack of information flowing from Mercedes HPP in the early stages of the new regulations.
That being said, Stella stressed that the process of McLaren optimising its Mercedes PU is not yet complete.
“Furthermore, over the past few months we’ve had the opportunity to deepen our understanding of the new power unit supplied by Mercedes HPP and to work with our technical partners to work out how best to utilise it.
“It’s been a long process, with its ups and downs, but one that’s starting to bear fruit. That said, I expect that optimising the power unit will remain a complex issue throughout the 2026 season.
“Returning to the car’s performance, it is clear that the Budapest weekend, which brought the first half of the season to a close, was the highlight: not only because of the result, but above all because the aerodynamic package we introduced at the Hungaroring is the result of this change of direction in development and has enabled us to make significant progress in terms of competitiveness.”
McLaren sits third in the Constructors’ standings at the summer break, 87 points behind Ferrari and 159 behind P1 Mercedes.
Additional reporting by Mat Coch and Thomas Maher
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