How 2023 is McLaren's blueprint to dust itself off after Chinese F1 no-show

The start of Formula 1's bold new era could hardly have gone much worse for McLaren. Across Australia and China, only one car even made it to the start of a grand prix, and the car that did was a distant fifth in the hands of world champion Lando Norris, 51 seconds behind jubilant winner George Russell.

What is extra painful is that neither Norris nor Oscar Piastri failed to make the start in Shanghai due to circumstances beyond their - and likely beyond the team's - control. The team found an issue on the electrical side of Norris' power unit, which meant he was unable to leave the garage for the laps to the grid.

Piastri did make it onto the grid, but the team then couldn't fire up the car again, linking it back to a different type of problem with exactly the same component that cost Norris.

Whether the root cause lies fully on the Mercedes HPP side or on McLaren's operation is unknown right now, pending further investigation at HPP in Brixworth. But as far as McLaren's outlook on the rest of 2026 is concerned, it doesn't really matter all that much right now. It's not going to bring back those valuable points lost, and what matters is that McLaren finds answers to it being knocked off its perch by both Mercedes and Ferrari following back-to-back constructors' titles.

According to team principal Andrea Stella, this is exactly the kind of situation in which an organisation falls back to the level of its culture. And it has been here before when Stella was first appointed team boss and tried to instil a winning mentality as part of a raft of organisational changes.

"It is a tough moment, that's for sure," Stella said. "But after the race, both Lando and Oscar remain quite positive. 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, just a positive attitude, which focuses us on what we can control. In this case, there wasn't much we could have controlled. So, we just take any possible lessons and we go again."

This setback is nothing compared to its brutal double weekend in Las Vegas and Qatar last year, when the squad itself made significant errors that could have cost it the drivers' title.

Stella is confident his team's poor start to 2026 will make it stronger

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

"When we won the double championship, the victory was not in Abu Dhabi, the victory was in Qatar and in Vegas for the way we withstood the difficulties," added Stella. "That's where you really become a champion. So today, 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 world champion in the future and gain the qualities to be a champion. That's our mindset and I've seen it completely at play today with Oscar, with Lando and with the team."

Recreating 2023's development path

Sunday's disaster overshadows what had actually been a more positive weekend for McLaren. It is still F1's third-fastest team, but it was closer to both Mercedes and Ferrari on a circuit that was less extreme on energy management. At the same time, McLaren had also made big steps on its own understanding of how to optimise the new power units following a bit of a head scratcher in Melbourne.

May's Miami Grand Prix, the site of Norris' maiden win in 2024, has become somewhat of a tentpole for McLaren to roll out significant upgrades in recent years - it will be no different this season

The other parallel with 2023, and 2024, is that McLaren will now have to develop its way to the front again mid-season. The regulations are now completely different, but the people, know-how and methodologies responsible for its path to glory are still the same.

May's Miami Grand Prix, the site of Norris' maiden win in 2024, has become somewhat of a tentpole for McLaren to roll out significant upgrades in recent years. It will be no different this season, which was already part of McLaren's development strategy rather than a response to the cancellation of April's Middle Eastern races.

"What is happening at McLaren now on the ground and at the factory is that we are trying to develop the car as fast as possible, in every single area," Stella said on Saturday after qualifying, where his drivers shipped half a second to polesitter Kimi Antonelli in the Mercedes.

"After the test and then the start of the season, we have learned even more about what we need to improve based on looking at our own data, and we have definitely taken inspiration by looking at the other cars. We are now merging this important amount of information that we have gained, and we are designing the new parts. We didn't have big projects that were targeting Bahrain and Saudi, in fact we were targeting [upgrades] for later than those two events, so our part of development is not much affected."

McLaren is comfortably F1's third best team right now

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

What China has further proven to McLaren, and which Stella already mentioned in Melbourne, is that Mercedes' advantage on its customer team isn't just down to being further along the road in understanding its in-house power units. That aspect is real, but it disguises just how strong the Mercedes W17 is as an overall package, which can be seen from the mid-corner and exit speeds on the GPS traces.

Alongside overall downforce, McLaren is also chasing aerodynamic efficiency to reduce drag, yet another parallel with its 2023 and 2024 lineage of cars. "In Australia, 50% of the deficit to Mercedes was related to exploitation of the power unit, and the other 50% grip in the corners," Stella said. "I think we have closed the gap a little bit because we are exploiting the power unit better, but when it comes to the corners, the gap we have is pretty much similar to what we saw in Australia.

"This is related to not having enough aerodynamic load. And we all know at McLaren that we need to improve the aerodynamic efficiency of the car, and in particular downforce, so when it comes to assessing the performance of the car in the corner, I would say that's the main deficit.

"There's good stuff happening in development, so I would expect that the car will be significantly improved in the coming races, especially starting from Miami, but obviously we will have to see what the rate of development is of the other teams, because all cars will be improved."

What is making Stella optimistic that McLaren can do it all over again, is that unlike 2023, both the team's and the car's foundations are now much stronger, and the Italian has ruled out the need for the Woking squad to change its aero concept.

"We are obviously very determined to create a similar path of development to what we had in 2023 and then carry the momentum into the following season, from scoring podiums in 2023 to being double champions in 2025," he concluded.

"I think there's a fundamental difference to 2023. In 2023, we needed to go back to the drawing board, because the concept that we had in 2022 and into 2023 would have not taken us very far.

"This car that we have at the moment is a solid platform. If anything, it's slightly underdeveloped, let me say. There's nothing in the car that is not sound conceptually, it just needs to be developed further."

How will McLaren bounce back?

Photo by: James Sutton / Formula 1 / Formula Motorsport Ltd via Getty Images