McLaren gives worrying F1 2026 pace deficit estimate

McLaren believes it is starting the 2026 Formula 1 season up to one second behind Mercedes.

Reigning world champion Lando Norris finished over 50 seconds behind race-winner George Russell and 35 seconds adrift of Lewis Hamilton in a distant fifth place in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

Norris was able to fend off the recovering Red Bull of Max Verstappen as the sole McLaren after team-mate Oscar Piastri crashed out before the start of his home race.

Afterwards, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella cast a worrying estimate of his side’s deficit to the front of the grid.

“I think in fairness the gap today was, if anything, similar to what we saw yesterday in qualifying,” Stella said.

“There’s performance that needs to come from two main areas. One if the power unit exploitation, and one is having more grip in the corners. In a way today I think it was exactly the same.

“Still we remain a little puzzled by the difference we see in the data between the speed of our car and the speed of other cars using the same power unit.

“Clearly it indicates that we should be doing a better job in understanding in how to better utilise the power unit with the complexities that came with the 2026 regulations. So definitely work to do.

“At the same time, when we look at the GPS, we see that Mercedes is faster in some of the corners. Therefore, like I said, we have clear objectives and priorities. We need to find a way to extract more out of the power unit and on the other side, develop the car.

“This will take a few races in terms of seeing some major upgrades to allow us to change a bit the category for which we compete. Therefore, I think in these few initial races we will need to make sure that we extract the most from the car in it’s current configuration.

“Definitely work ahead of us and the gap at the moment seems to be in the range between half a second and one second.”

Downbeat Norris concedes McLaren is ‘miles off’

Norris cut a downbeat figure after Sunday’s season-opener as he insisted McLaren has a “a lot of work to do” to improve.

“We finished probably finished where we deserved to. It’s quite clear the Red Bull is a lot quicker, particularly as Max came from last and almost beat us,” Norris told Sky Sports F1.

“Not the best race in terms of pace. We struggled with some things on the car at the beginning. We made some tweaks and that certainly improved things.

“We’re nowhere near where we need to be, clearly. But probably more from a car perspective. I think today showed a lot from the car that we are a long way off, like a very, very long way off and we have a lot of work to do.”

Norris added: “Ferrari, from what we can see, has the best car. Their cornering speeds are unbelievable. So for us to match that, there’s zero chance of doing it and we have to work very hard to understand things and learn a lot from this part of the season.”