Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri find the current McLaren MCL40 difficult to handle: Why the team won’t be able to address the root cause until 2027
Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have complained this year that the McLaren MCL40 is an uncooperative car. Team principal Andrea Stella has now admitted that the car’s handling cannot be improved without “fundamental changes” – and it is precisely these changes that will only be possible from the 2027 season.
Admittedly, every Formula 1 driver has had to adapt to the new generation of cars and engines this year in order to extract maximum performance – often using unnatural or unfamiliar driving techniques that they have never had to employ throughout their entire careers to date.
However, McLaren has been struggling with a more deep-seated handling issue throughout the season: Whilst Norris and Piastri are trying to adapt their driving styles to the V6 turbo-hybrids with a higher proportion of electric power, the additional complexity in handling is massively hampering the team’s overall progress compared to the competition.
The problem seems to be affecting Piastri more severely than his team-mate due to his natural driving style. McLaren will only be able to resolve the issue completely when far-reaching technical changes can be made with a completely new car for 2027.
“I don’t expect the upcoming upgrades to improve this characteristic,” says Stella, tempering expectations. “I believe we need something more fundamental than simply adding more downforce to the car, as will happen in the next few races.”
“Without fundamental changes to other aspects that we’ll be addressing in the longer term – starting, at the earliest, with the MCL41 for 2027 – nothing will change.” After the race in Singapore, Norris went into more detail on the subject, explaining that he has to force his McLaren to do what he wants, rather than finding a balance with which he feels comfortable.
Lando Norris “can’t work any magic”
“ “The car is on a knife-edge in every single corner,” said Norris. “You have to manoeuvre it with millimetre precision within a very narrow window and force the car in absolutely every respect. You can’t leave any of the work to the car. You can’t just let the front or rear axle do the work.”
You have to force both the front and the rear. “You have to drive in a way that demands an enormous amount of concentration and skill,” emphasises the McLaren driver. “It’s absolutely exhausting and mentally gruelling because you have to work so hard at the wheel.”
“It’s simply too difficult, and that makes it impossible to string together clean laps in qualifying. That just shows how good a job we did when we were on pole and achieved things like that – and how rewarding it felt.”
At the moment, McLaren is “not fast enough”, warns Norris. “It’s simply too difficult, and you can’t work any magic. You have to force the car and can’t leave anything to it, because it doesn’t do anything on its own. And that’s not at all what you want from a racing car.”
Oscar Piastri is struggling in particular with the McLaren MCL40
According to Stella, this “intensity” in driving is a characteristic that has defined the McLaren throughout the season. Norris and Piastri have had to learn to cope with it. The Australian, who naturally drives with softer, gentler steering inputs, therefore found the adjustment more difficult.
“ “The fact that the car demands an enormous amount of effort to set lap times, and requires a level of intensity in steering inputs that is far greater than last year’s – that was something the drivers first had to understand,” explains Stella.
“That’s also one of the reasons why Oscar has, at times, lost some of his competitiveness compared to Lando. We sat here and discussed it: what’s going on with Oscar? I’ve always said that there’s a technical reason for it.”
“Oscar simply had to understand how to make the car do certain things, and that driving fast doesn’t necessarily mean driving cleanly, so to speak.” The team principal is thus defending his driver, who now has no chance of winning the world title either.
“When we used to see him driving fast, he was extremely clean,” says Stella. “You could see from the data that he was extremely consistent and fast. With this car, all these factors don’t come together as often – so it’s an immense amount of work for the drivers.”
