Andrea Stella believes that the fierce fight for both titles in 2025 directly penalized McLaren at the start of the 2026 season.
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McLaren knew that defending its two world crowns in 2026 would be complicated with the introduction of a new technical regulation. But the British team may not have anticipated how much its battle for the previous season’s titles would weigh on its campaign start.
After winning the constructors’ championship and enabling Lando Norris to secure his first world title in 2025, McLaren approached this new era with the ambition to continue its momentum.
The reality was quite different. Mercedes immediately took the lead with its W17, while McLaren had to wait until the Hungarian Grand Prix to regain victory thanks to Norris. Andrea Stella now acknowledges that part of this delay originates from choices made a year earlier.
McLaren pushed to the limit in 2025
Last season had long seemed destined for McLaren. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri had dominated much of the championship and appeared set to fight for the title between themselves.
But the spectacular comeback of Max Verstappen and Red Bull in the second half of the season completely changed the situation. McLaren was then forced to continue developing its car to protect its world ambitions, rather than fully shifting its resources to the 2026 project.
A choice that ultimately paid off since Norris won the title by only two points against Verstappen, while McLaren also retained the constructors’ crown. But this success came at a cost.
“After three years of steady progress that allowed us to win three of the four world titles at stake in 2024 and 2025, the start of this season was a real reset,” explains Andrea Stella.
“We understood the heavy price paid”
The scale of the regulatory change that took place this winter further amplified the consequences of this decision. Teams had to design fundamentally different cars while working with a new generation of power units.
“It’s not only because the regulation changes were probably the most significant in the history of this sport, but especially because we understood how much we had paid a heavy price for the efforts made in 2025 to win both championships.”
McLaren thus found itself in an unusual situation from the very first races. After having the benchmark on the grid in 2025, the Woking team had to watch Mercedes quickly take command of the new hierarchy.
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A few podiums helped limit the damage, but the MCL40 lacked the performance to regularly fight for wins.
A reaction Stella is proud of
Rather than seeking mitigating circumstances, Andrea Stella assures that McLaren focused on identifying the weaknesses of its car and ways to fix them.
“We could have fallen apart. We could have looked for excuses to explain why we were not able to start this championship as we finished the previous one, but that was not the case.”
“We tried to understand the technical and strategic reasons, then we focused our efforts. And that is what really makes me proud of this team.”
The Italian executive believes this difficult period also reminded the importance of cohesion within the team.
“The most important lesson we take from these seven months of hard work is that in times of great difficulty, unity is strength. Above all, we proved to ourselves how essential team cohesion is to bounce back and find the path to the top.”
The win in Hungary as a trigger?
The first results of this work are now visible. In Budapest, McLaren introduced a significant upgrade to its car and Norris immediately took advantage to give the team its first win of the season.
A success that does not erase the points lost during the first half of the championship, but confirms that McLaren has finally managed to reduce part of its gap.
It now remains to be seen if this comeback happens early enough to allow the defending champions to return to the fight against Mercedes and Ferrari. One thing is certain: McLaren now fully measures the price paid for pushing its development until the last moments of its victorious 2025 campaign.
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