Despite showing promising pace across much of the F1 Canadian Grand Prix (GP) weekend, McLaren’s Team Principal Andrea Stella admitted the team left Montreal with questions surrounding the true competitiveness of its latest upgrade package after struggling heavily with tyre temperatures during Sunday’s race.
McLaren arrived at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with a revised package for the MCL40, including updates to the front wing, in a bid to continue closing the gap to the front-running teams.
Across Sprint Qualifying and the Sprint itself, the signs initially appeared encouraging. Both McLaren drivers remained firmly in contention near the front of the field, with the team Qualifying for the Sprint Race in P3 and P4, and Norris finishing the Sprint in P2, with Piastri in P4. The team showed competitive one-lap pace while appearing to establish itself as one of the leading challengers behind Mercedes.
Grand Prix Qualifying continued that trend, with the Woking-based outfit once again looking capable of fighting near the sharp end of the grid around the low-downforce Montreal circuit, as Norris Qualifying P3 and Piastri P4.
However, the full-length Grand Prix told a very different story.
The Grand Prix
McLaren struggled throughout Sunday’s race to switch on the front tyres in the cooler conditions, leaving both drivers battling persistent locking issues and an overall lack of grip across race stints. The were also the only drivers to start on the Inters within the Top 8, which turned to be a big pressure point at the start of the Grand Prix.
Speaking after 2026 F1 Canadian GP to print media, Stella admitted that McLaren’s pace in free air fell well short of expectations despite the encouraging signs shown earlier in the weekend.
“I think this sprint event has two phases,” Stella explained. “Up until the race today[Sunday’s Grand Prix] we can say that the cars seem to be performing well. We seem to be within a few tenths of a second of Mercedes, still remaining the best car, but probably the second-best car now and this was encouraging.”
While McLaren had looked capable of consistently challenging near the podium positions during the Sprint format sessions, Stella conceded Sunday’s race exposed weaknesses that the team had not anticipated.
“But today independently of the issues with the starting tyres or other kinds of issues, even when we were in the free air I don’t think we exhibited any competitive pace at the level that we had exhibited up until today,” he said.
The Italian pointed directly towards tyre temperature struggles as the primary reason for the sudden drop in competitiveness.
“I can only point this towards the lack of tyre temperature,” Stella continued. “The drivers kept locking tyres and going long in corners and just not getting the front tyres to work at all.”
Looking overall at the MCL40’s upgrades
Despite the disappointment of the Grand Prix result, Stella still viewed the overall picture from the upgraded package as largely positive, particularly given McLaren’s competitiveness during the earlier phases of the weekend.
The front wing update remains an area the team still needs more time to fully evaluate, but Stella suggested the overall package had moved the team closer towards the front of the field on outright pace.
Still, the race pace concerns left McLaren uncertain over whether a podium challenge would have been realistically possible even without the complications encountered during Sunday’s race.
“So I would say that even in a normal race, in a race in which we had no issues, looking at the pace of the other cars that were contending for the podium, I’m not sure that today we would have had this pace,” Stella admitted. “Based on the laps that we did when we had the possibility to use the full potential.”
While the F1 Canadian GP ultimately delivered mixed conclusions for McLaren, the weekend nevertheless provided signs that the team’s development direction is continuing to move forward, even if further work remains to better understand the car’s operating window in varying conditions.
