McLaren won the 2024 and 2025 constructors' championships. Heading into 2026, the question was not "will they win again" — it was "by how much". Four rounds in, the answer is "they are third, on 94 points, 86 behind Mercedes". That is a problem.
Except the Miami sprint data tells a different story. Let me lay it out.
The constructors' standings as of Miami
Source: formula1.com
Mercedes 180. Ferrari 112. McLaren 94. Red Bull 56[1]. The defending champions are 86 points off the lead. Not a hole you cannot dig out of in eighteen races, but a hole.
The race-pace data tells the medium-term story
Source: FIA timing data
Median race lap-time for the top three teams across the four 2026 rounds tells you where the cars actually are. At Australia and China, McLaren was the third-fastest of the top three. By Japan, McLaren had closed to within 0.2s of Mercedes on race pace. By Miami, the gap was 0.13s. Slow, steady, real progress.
The Miami upgrade — a redesigned floor, revised front-wing endplate, new sidepod inlet[1] — is the most visible chunk of that progress.
Miami Sprint — the moment the narrative shifted
The Miami Sprint was the single best McLaren weekend so far in 2026[2]. Norris won. Piastri second. Leclerc third in the Ferrari. Both Mercedes drivers behind all three of them. McLaren took 15 of the 36 sprint points on offer.
The main race on Sunday was less rosy — Antonelli won by 3 seconds from Norris with Piastri another 30 seconds back — but Miami still gave McLaren 48 weekend points combined (Norris 26, Piastri 22), the largest haul of any team across the four rounds.
Source: FIA results
The per-round breakdown shows the team's recovery clearly. Australia: Norris scored 7 (P6 main race), Piastri 0 (lap-1 retirement). China: 8 vs 12, Piastri ahead on the back of a P5 main race. Japan: 10 vs 18, Piastri P2 in the main race. Miami: 26 vs 22, Norris finally winning a session.
Norris vs Piastri — the inter-team dynamic
The defending world champion Lando Norris has out-scored Oscar Piastri 51 to 43 across the four rounds, but the gap is razor-thin. Piastri was quicker through Japan; Norris was quicker through Miami. They are evenly matched — Piastri arguably the steadier race driver and Norris the bigger one-lap weapon.
The risk for McLaren: this is the same intra-team tension that nearly cost them the 2025 drivers' title until Verstappen scored fewer points than expected in the final rounds[1]. If the car becomes consistently fastest again, the team-orders question reopens.
What Andrea Stella has actually done
Team principal Andrea Stella made three calls between Australia and Miami that are now paying off:
- Brought forward the Miami upgrade by two rounds. It was scheduled for Imola; it landed in Miami. That cost extra wind-tunnel and CFD time but gave the team an earlier read on whether their winter direction was right.
- Simplified the inter-driver rules. Stella has publicly said McLaren will "simplify the racing rules" between Norris and Piastri this year[1] — code for "fewer team orders, more let-them-race". This rewards the in-form driver in any given weekend.
- Kept faith in the chassis concept. McLaren did not panic-redesign. The 2025 MCL39 concept carried over. The Miami floor is an evolution, not a reset.
All three look smart in retrospect.
What Miami's pace means going forward
If McLaren maintains the Miami race-pace gain at Imola onwards, the championship picture shifts in three ways:
- Antonelli's pole-to-win streak gets harder. Mercedes was 0.5s ahead in race pace at the early rounds. By Miami it was 0.13s. If Imola confirms the swap, Antonelli wins from pole become contested, not certain.
- Norris and Piastri start scoring big. A 1-2 at Imola is realistic. Two more rounds of 1-2s would close the constructors' gap to under 30 points.
- Ferrari is the team in trouble. Their race pace was already third-fastest; McLaren has just leapfrogged them on the latest evidence. Hamilton and Leclerc are now fighting for fifth and sixth on Sundays, not third and fourth.
The cautionary read
One race is one race. Miami's tarmac is famously inconsistent, the temperatures swung, and McLaren brought rear-wing levels that worked at Miami but might not work at higher-downforce circuits like Imola, Monaco, and Spain. Piastri himself cautioned[4] that "one upgrade does not make a season".
The first real verdict comes at Imola in two weeks. If McLaren can replicate Miami race pace at a high-downforce European track, the title fight is back to a multi-team contest. If Imola is a regression and Mercedes is back on top by 0.3s, Miami was an outlier.
The verdict
McLaren in May 2026 is not "back" yet — they are 86 points off the constructors' lead, and they have zero race wins in four rounds (despite the Miami sprint win). But the trend in race pace is real and the Miami sprint showed the latest package has the legs to beat both Mercedes drivers on outright pace.
The defending champions are not dead. They are not even close to dead. They just had a bad first quarter and brought their best upgrade two rounds early to fix it.
The mid-season is going to be a fight.