McLaren breathe sigh of relief after encouraging Singapore Grand Prix display

Pulse Sports Team 13:34 - 15 October 2026

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has admitted that the Woking-based outfit breathed a collective sigh of relief following a much stronger showing at the Singapore Grand Prix, bouncing back from two difficult race weekends in Azerbaijan and Malaysia.

In Baku, McLaren rolled out substantial revisions to the MCL40, including redesigned sidepods. The primary goal behind the update package was to boost top-end straight-line speed, a critical performance metric on the high-speed Baku street circuit.

However, both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri fell off the pace along the Caspian Sea, and a week later in Malaysia, the team were left questioning whether the upgrades were to blame. The abrasive asphalt at Sepang made track-to-simulator data correlation virtually impossible. Singapore, however, provided the ideal conditions to validate the package, reassuring McLaren that the developments are performing as intended.

"If you take Baku and Malaysia in isolation, we were not very competitive. We had doubts about the upgrade package we introduced in Baku, though we never anticipated a massive step in terms of lap time. But because we upgraded both cars at the same time, we couldn't run a direct back-to-back comparison, which left us wondering if we had made the car slower. "Now we have had the right conditions to confirm that wasn't the case, which was a crucial question to answer in Singapore. We returned to a much more representative circuit compared to Malaysia, where the extremely rough surface produced some very strange data. We now understand that tarmac abrasiveness was the cause. "As for Baku, where power unit optimization plays a decisive role, we know we had other trade-offs hurting our straight-line speed, including gear ratios. So we had questions over those two races, but we're pleased to have confirmed that everything is on track," Stella explained after the Marina Bay weekend.