Norris and Piastri remember the bad starts of 2023 and 2024 that ended in spectacular recoveries: in Japan, they had already reduced the gap to Mercedes to just 0.3s in qualifying. The goal is to fight for the title, not give up.
The McLaren team has not started the 2026 season as it hoped, the reigning constructors' world champion has come up against an adverse reality: Mercedes and Ferrari have taken a significant step forward with the new technical regulations, leaving the Woking team behind in the first races: in Australia, the gap was brutal, with Lando Norris finishing 51 seconds behind George Russell, however, at the Japanese Grand Prix, the papaya team finally found concrete reasons to believe in a turnaround.
Oscar Piastri was the one in charge of igniting hope; the Australian qualified just 0.3 seconds behind Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes' pole-sitter, a clear reduction from the 0.8-second deficit in Melbourne and the 0.5-second gap in China. In the race, he took the lead at the start and held it for several laps, even being in a position to win, an unfortunate safety car ended up hurting his strategy, and he finally crossed the line in second place, 13.7 seconds behind the Italian, but with the feeling that a victory had been within reach.
"I trust that this team will fight for victory again this season. In the third race, although in the end there was still a difference, we managed to exceed our initial expectations, and without the safety car, we could have fought for the win" Piastri assured, his teammate and current world champion, Lando Norris, echoed that sentiment, emphasizing that the goal is to fight for the title, not to give up and focus on next year.
The current situation strongly recalls the difficult starts of previous seasons that ended with spectacular recoveries, looking back, in 2023, McLaren had serious problems and on several occasions did not even manage to get past Q1, yet the team staged an incredible recovery throughout the year and finished fourth in the championship, in 2024, they only got on the podium once in the first three races, but they also recovered and ultimately won the Constructors' World Championship.
Norris emphasized that accumulated experience as a key factor: "There are many examples where we weren't exactly where we wanted to be at the beginning of the year, but we ended up in a much stronger position at the end (2023, 2024, etc.) and now we are a stronger team than back then. We've been through this, we've done it, we've learned, and I think this team knows how to bounce back."
With the championship now on a five week break due to the suspension of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia rounds, McLaren has a crucial window to develop the car, the challenge is clear: to repeat their historic 2024 comeback, reduce the gap to Mercedes, and re-establish themselves as title contenders when the season resumes at the Miami Grand Prix in early May.