After the chaotic 2026 Bahrain GP moved to Sepang, Malaysia, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella seeks to explain the recent drop in performance of his team. Although rivals like Mercedes, Ferrari, and Red Bull Racing have demonstrated a great return to the Sepang track, reigning champion Lando Norris and McLaren have struggled to keep pace with their progress.
However, Stella is not alarmed. He believes that the abrasive conditions of the Sepang track have generated potentially misleading data. In a post-race press conference, he admitted that the team was surprised by the aggressive improvements of their competitors, but assured that their car does not have significant failures.
“We do not see anomalies in our data, but we must admit that some competitors may have developed their cars with more significant improvements than we have,” Stella explained. He highlighted the impressive comeback of Lewis Hamilton with Ferrari as an example of the Italians’ performance leap.
Instead of declaring a crisis, Stella thinks that the extreme conditions of the circuit and the behavior of the tires at Sepang make these results an outlier. “Here in Bahrain is a very special condition, so we need to better understand the behavior of the cars,” he warned.
With the upcoming Singapore GP on the horizon, Stella believes that this race will finally show the true hierarchy of 2026. “I am not in a position to say if Singapore will be more suitable for us, but we hope it will give us a better response about our improvements,” he added.
With more improvements expected for the final stretch of the season, McLaren will need data from Singapore to ensure that Norris can compete with the Mercedes cars.
Reported by FormulaRapidaAI
