Is McLaren's F1 title defence already doomed after nightmare start?

There is no sugar coating it; McLaren’s F1 title defence has got off to a nightmare start. 

Reigning world champion Lando Norris’ distant fifth place finish at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix is the best McLaren has to show for its efforts so far in 2026. 

Disaster struck at the Chinese Grand Prix, with both McLaren drivers failing to take the start last weekend due to separate electrical issues with their cars' Mercedes power units. Oscar Piastri is yet to complete a grand prix lap, having crashed out before the start of his home race in Melbourne. 

A miserable first two rounds of the campaign leaves McLaren with just 18 points (having finished fourth and sixth in the China sprint) and 80 points behind championship leader Mercedes. It marks the worst start to a title defence in F1 since Red Bull in 2014. 

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella acknowledges the Woking squad is in a “tough moment” but believes his side has what it takes to bounce back. 

"I think what we have gone through at McLaren in terms of the journey from 2023 has been such a good journey of developing a culture, a mindset, what we call internally a winner's mindset,” Stella told media including Crash.net in Shanghai. 

“Just a positive attitude, which focuses us on what we can control. In this case [in China], there wasn't much we could have controlled, so we just take any possible learning and we go again.”

Stella added: "Even looking at last year, when we won the double championship, we said, and I said that publicly, but we definitely said internally, the victory was not in Abu Dhabi. 

“The victory was in Qatar [when a strategy error cost both drivers] and in Vegas [when both cars were disqualified], for the way we withstood the difficulties. That's where you really become a champion.

"So this is part of the same part of the journey, which is the day in which you have to withstand the difficulty, you have to process it and you have to use it to become even more of a worthwhile champion in the future and gain the qualities to be a champion.

"That's our mindset and I've seen it completely at play with Oscar, with Lando and with the team.”

While you would be forgiven for already writing off McLaren’s chances of winning a third constructors’ world title this year, recent history suggests there are reasons still to be optimistic. 

Can McLaren pull off another remarkable turnaround? 

McLaren’s shocking start to 2026 has shades of 2023, the last time the team kicked off a new F1 campaign in terrible fashion. 

In 2023, McLaren pulled off an incredible turnaround by transforming itself from midfield stragglers to the front of the grid with a series of development masterstrokes following a major technical reshuffle. 

McLaren concluded 2023 fourth in the constructors’ standings, with its end-of-season form laying the foundations for an ultimately successful title charge in 2024. McLaren followed up its first constructors’ crown since 1998 with double world championship glory in 2025. 

McLaren already finds itself in a much better position than 2023 because it has a strong baseline car design with plenty of scope for development gains. 

"There's a fundamental difference to 2023," Stella explained. 

"This car that we have at the moment is a solid platform. If anything it is slightly underdeveloped. There's nothing in the car that is not sound conceptually, it just needs to be developed further, but following kind of the conceptual lines that we have outlined in the launch phase of this car.

"In 2023, we needed to rectify some designs, pursue some different aerodynamic concepts, because the concept that we had in 2022 and into 2023 would have not taken us very far. 

“So we needed to sort of go back to the drawing board, redesign more conceptually what aerodynamic flow field we want to achieve and then review the geometries quite extensively.

"Instead, the journey for this car will be more about accelerating the development along principles that we think are sound, if anything [is] still a little too below the line of development of where Ferrari and Mercedes seem to be at the moment.”

In addition, McLaren is yet to get the best out of its 2026 Mercedes power unit, which is the class-leading engine this season. There is further performance to be unlocked as McLaren continues to learn how to optimise Mercedes’ engine. 

"We are in a better position than we were in Australia, so I think we are now able to extract more performance from the power unit,” Stella said. "It looks like we still have some performance that we can extract, so this is positive, because we can further improve the lap times. So, more to come in the coming events.”

McLaren will benefit from double race cancellation 

The MCL40 lacks aerodynamic load and efficiency, but a potential big update could arrive as soon as the Miami Grand Prix. 

Miami was originally going to be round six of the 2026 season, but following the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix due to the Iran war, it will now be the fourth race of the year. 

One unintended consequence of F1’s double cancellation is that it provides a four-week gap on the calendar for teams to work on upgrades and look to further understand their complex 2026 challengers. 

This will be a welcome break for teams like McLaren, who have started the year on the back foot. While there is no denying that McLaren is not where it wants to be, there is genuine hope it can rebound. 

“Every year is different; there is never a guarantee, but I have a lot of hope and faith in the team that we can turn things around from where we are,” Norris said. 

“It is still a long season, and after Japan, there is a good little break coming up, so that’s probably a good thing for us to try and figure things out, and it gives us a bit more time to maybe develop some things to see if we can get it on the car earlier.

“So, as much as it is not the start of the year that we want, I have a lot of confidence in the team that we can improve things, and we can fight for podiums at some point this year, and that we can fight for wins maybe later in the season.

“I want to believe that. Tough start, but I have faith.”