The 2026 Chinese GP was a disaster for team principal Andrea Stella and the entire McLaren F1 team. Neither of the consecutive Constructors’ Champions’ cars were able to start the race. Reigning World Driver’s Champion Lando Norris could not even leave his garage. His teammate Oscar Piastri was pushed back into the pits just before the formation lap, meaning he still has no Grand Prix starts in the 2026 F1 season.
Despite the trouble, Stella praises his team’s positive perspective on the current troubles. He was more frustrated about the missed out points than the collection of data for the F1 team.
Much to learn from 2026 Chinese GP for Stella and the team
Once it was clear that neither McLaren driver can start the 2026 Chinese GP, Andrea Stella confirmed that the team used that as an opportunity to follow the race closely.
“Yeah, that was the case,” said Stella in a print media session.
He continued that both drivers watched the race by themselves first but for some laps, Norris, Piastri and the Italian watched the race together.
“So the drivers did it independently. Then for part of the race, actually, we were watching the race together with myself, Oscar and Lando.”
Qualified F1 spectators in the McLaren garage
Both drivers, Norris and Piastri and Team Principal Stella followed the 2026 F1 Chinese GP as spectators from the McLaren garage. They looked closely at tyre behaviour, overtaking and the racing in general. It was a valuable opportunity for them to analyse things to help McLaren against understand things for themselves, and against their competition.
“We were making comments on the behaviour of the tyres, the behaviour of the hard tyres in particular, making comments about power unit characteristics, the racing, what happens when you start to race another car, what’s the impact on lap times, how you can re-overtake another car. So all learnings that you can maximise by just being a spectator, but still a spectator that is quite qualified and kind of know all the background and the information such that you can capitalise, feel something useful, even if you are in the position where you would never want to be, which is being a spectator rather than a protagonist.“
The double DNS felt like a big set-back for the reigning Constructors’ Champion team. No F1 driver wants to follow the race from the sidelines. For a team having both cars not starting a race most likely feels even worse.
With the third round of the 2026 F1 season coming up, McLaren hopes for a better race weekend. From 27th to 29th of March, F1 will continue in Suzuka, Japan. Due to the cancellations of Bahrain and Jeddah, there will be no F1 in the month of April. The 2026 F1 season will then continue on the first weekend of May in Miami.
