McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella spoke in a print media session after the 2026 F1 British GP about the hurdles the team faced at Silverstone and needs to overcome to get back to championship contention. After this past weekend’s race the 2026 constructors’ champions are in third place, 154 points behind Mercedes, with no wins and just four podiums on the season.
“We are out of sync with upgrades”
Stella said that their pace of development is at the top of those priorities. “I think the fact that we are out of sync with upgrades is probably the biggest single factor.
“We see that everyone bringing upgrades improves their lap time potential by three tenths or something. And definitely this would not fill the gap that we have to Ferrari and Mercedes. Because I think it’s more in the area of half a second. But definitely it would be very healthy.“
Such upgrades would likely have improved their placings of P4 for Lando Norris and P11 for Oscar Piastri. The Italian noted that, particularly at Silverstone, the conditions require more grip than the McLaren presently has.
Stella notes British GP race conditions affecting McLaren
“The second factor, I would say that here the grip is very low. The conditions are difficult. The car slides. It’s quite unpredictable with the wind. And there’s a premium on cars that have more grip and more downforce because the car is just a little bit easier to predict.“
Stella did not think that tyre degradation in itself was an issue for the team at Silverstone, but did identify it as a point of exploration for the team.
“I would not mention the tyres [as a problem]. Because I think when I look at the degradation in the race, I think pretty much all cars have very similar degradation. Certainly we don’t have any of the advantage that we had in 2025. So even this one is an area in which we need to try and create some competitive advantage.“
“Everyone is working at maximum pace”
Stella also emphasised that, while they are a customer team of Mercedes, the relationship between team and supplier is solid, and they have been receptive to any issues that McLaren have had.
“I think when it comes to the power unit exploitation and the opportunities that we have in this area, it’s a fact that we have opportunities, but not necessarily the implication is that [AMG Mercedes] HPP are not trying hard enough. I think HPP, like for any other team, in a process of development, in a process of fixing reliability issues, we have been affected by battery problems, some other teams by ICE problems.
“They are running as fast as they can, which means that it’s difficult for them to carry forward all the solutions, all the fixes, even the allocation of the power units based on the actual amount of mileage per car, because it looks like here we are not on the latest specification, because Alpine and Williams have accrued more mileage than us, and they were more in need of upgrading their engine. So I think it’s just a fact that everyone is working at maximum pace, and there’s a few things that can be left behind. So we accept that this is part of the conversations we are having with HPP.“
