- Andrea Stella calls Norris and Piastri “probably the strongest pair” on the grid.
- A transformed MCL40 in Miami delivered McLaren’s first double podium of 2026.
- Third consecutive constructors’ title remains the target, but car needs to get faster.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella believes Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri give his team the strongest driver pairing on the Formula 1 grid.
He made the claim after the Miami Grand Prix, where McLaren secured their first double podium of the 2026 season.
Stella said the result offered grounds for cautious confidence as the team chases a third consecutive constructors’ championship.
Norris finished second in Miami, and Piastri third. Norris had also won the sprint race earlier that weekend.
The result came after McLaren rolled out seven aerodynamic upgrades at the Miami International Autodrome, which Stella had described as making the MCL40 a “completely new car.”
McLaren’s rocky start gives way to a resurgence in Miami
The season had not begun well for McLaren. Mercedes dominated the opening four rounds, with Kimi Antonelli winning three races and George Russell taking one.
McLaren’s troubles were made worse at the Chinese Grand Prix, where both Norris and Piastri failed to start. That left the team with a significant points deficit heading into Miami.
Part of the slow start came down to the complexity of integrating their new Mercedes power unit. Stella’s engineers chose to understand that challenge first before pushing updates to the car.
Stella told the media, “We have just delivered our first upgrade, we are in Miami, and McLaren looks like they traditionally have done very well in Miami, so it could be that the way we develop our cars kind of suits this circuit, so we will have to see more.”
The upgrades worked. Norris took the sprint pole by two tenths over Antonelli, the only other driver to lap in the 1 minute 27 seconds bracket.
Stella identifies the Norris-Piastri partnership as McLaren’s trump card
Stella pointed to his drivers as the team’s clearest advantage in the constructors’ fight. He noted that Piastri had challenged for victory in Japan even when the car was not fully competitive.
He also highlighted Norris’s sprint win and podium challenge in Miami as further evidence of the pair’s consistent quality.
Stella told reporters: “I think when we look in particular at the Constructors’ Championship, I think we are, from a driver’s point of view, probably the strongest pair.”
He followed that with a caveat: “We want to capitalise on this strength that we have at McLaren, but we need to make the car a little bit faster.”
The numbers back his view. In 2025, Norris won the drivers’ title with 423 points, while Piastri finished third with 410. Together, they helped McLaren score 833 points, the second-highest total in F1 history.
Through the first four rounds of 2026, Norris sits fourth with 51 points and Piastri sixth with 43.
Stella also credited Antonelli, who leads the drivers’ standings. He said the 19-year-old’s pace and consistency had surprised him, adding that after pre-season testing, he had expected Russell to hold the upper hand.
“For some reason, things seem to have turned around [at Mercedes],” Stella said.
The long game: development over declarations
Stella was careful not to let the Miami result shift his focus to championship projections. He said it was too early in the season to start thinking about titles.
His approach, as he explained it, is to stay in the present and make the right decisions now, while keeping the longer goal of a championship defence in view.
McLaren sits third in the constructors’ standings with 94 points after four rounds. The gap to Mercedes is big. But the team has shown before, most notably in 2023, that a slow start does not rule out a strong finish.
McLaren completed a major mid-season upgrade push that year to turn their campaign around. Zak Brown has already indicated further upgrades are coming in 2026, including ideas drawn from rival car designs.
If the car continues to improve and Norris and Piastri keep extracting points the way they have, McLaren’s title defence has room to grow into something more serious.
