McLaren behind and looking to "counterattack" in F1 2026, says Andrea Stella

McLaren boss Andrea Stella reckons his team is slightly on the back foot heading into the 2026 Formula 1 campaign - claiming it will try to “exploit the counterattack”.

The new season will start in Melbourne next weekend after tests in Barcelona and Bahrain, from which Mercedes emerged as favourites for the title having impressed in its race simulations.

Ferrari is expected to be its nearest challenger after showing top outright pace, with Red Bull and Mercedes customer McLaren slightly behind - though this is still an estimation game.

That’s because the 2026 cars are completely different than before thanks to the regulation overhaul, making McLaren’s domination of the last two titles largely redundant. 

Stella said: “Within this leading group, we believe that Ferrari and Mercedes are a step ahead, although it is difficult to quantify how large the gap is. We will find out starting next week in Melbourne. 

“For our part, we are happy with what we have seen in our car, but we are equally aware that some of our main competitors – it is not coincidence that all three are works teams - have done an excellent job.

“We need to work hard to catch up and develop the car as quickly as possible. Once the cards are on the table, development will become the major challenge. To use a football metaphor, the first part of the season will see us playing a bit defensively, trying to exploit the counterattack.”

Andrea Stella, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

That doesn’t mean Stella is unhappy with where his team sits though, given it set the third and fourth quickest lap in testing alongside the fourth most mileage after Mercedes, Haas and Ferrari. 

"We are satisfied,” added Stella. “I think we worked very well, both on the track and in Woking, to gather a lot of useful information to better understand the behaviour of the MCL40 and the new power unit.

“In nine days across Barcelona and Bahrain, we completed more than 1,000 laps and covered essentially all of the items on the programme we had defined before travelling to Bahrain. 

“From a reliability point of view, we have made good progress and, above all, we have managed to make the car faster, both in terms of the chassis and the use of the PU supplied by our partner at [Mercedes] HPP, with whom we are working intensively to understand more and more how to exploit the potential available.

“Furthermore, running continuously on a demanding circuit like Sakhir allowed us to gather important information about the behaviour of the new generation of Pirelli tyres. As was the case in Barcelona, every run we did allowed us to learn something."