McLaren's 2026 title defense hit a wall before the lights went out. The reigning champions arrived at testing two to three months behind on aero development after Max Verstappen's late-season surge forced them to dump resources into 2025 instead of the new regs. Worse, Mercedes' customer power unit proved a nightmare—Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris missed three of the first four starts due to electric gremlins, leaving them 159 points adrift of the works Mercedes team at the break.
But McLaren does comebacks. The Miami-Montreal package brought them back into podium contention, then Hungary's redesigned floor and wing delivered the breakthrough: Norris grabbed his first win as defending champion after battling Piastri for the top step. Team principal Andrea Stella knows the math—half a second more to find across eleven rounds. McLaren's back in the upgrade war, just catastrophically behind on points.
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