McLaren suffered a major setback in Baku as a double zero temporarily halted its pursuit of Ferrari for second place in the Constructors’ Championship. On a weekend when the MCL40 lacked the competitiveness of Mercedes, costly driver errors – combined with Franco Colapinto’s mistake in Lando Norris’s case – prevented the Woking team from limiting the damage against Ferrari.
Since introducing its Budapest upgrades, McLaren had been gaining an average of nine points per weekend on the Italian team. A similar or even stronger trend will now be required through to December if McLaren is to erase a deficit that currently stands at 72 points.
After qualifying and the race in Azerbaijan, team principal Andrea Stella stressed that the extensive upgrade package introduced in Baku had delivered the expected results. Even so, the overall level of competitiveness was not sufficient. Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris then compounded the situation with costly mistakes at Turn 1, while Norris never had the opportunity to recover on the more competitive tyre compound after becoming involved in the incident at the restart.
Baku exposed McLaren’s efficiency and power deficit
Baku places an enormous premium on aerodynamic efficiency and power, making cars with particular strengths in those areas – such as Mercedes and Red Bull – especially competitive. McLaren, like Ferrari and Audi, paid a price for not being as well suited to those demands.
Oscar Piastri’s first stint also needs to be viewed in the context of a tyre-compound advantage worth several tenths over Max Verstappen. Despite that disadvantage, the Red Bull driver was still able to keep pace with the Australian.
Although Baku features a completely different mix of corners from Monza, the competitive order seen at the Temple of Speed was reproduced almost identically in Azerbaijan across qualifying and the race. In the first season of regulations built around the new power units, outright power and aerodynamic efficiency are clearly proving decisive at circuits of this type. A similar pattern is expected when Formula 1 reaches Las Vegas.
Why the MCL40 struggled despite its major Baku upgrade
Baku arguably produced Mercedes’ strongest performance of the season relative to the rest of the field. McLaren faced the opposite situation, with the characteristics of the MCL40 proving poorly matched to the demands of the Azerbaijan circuit.
A lack of aerodynamic efficiency forced McLaren into a less-than-ideal compromise through the middle sector in order to retain enough straight-line speed to defend on Baku’s long flat-out sections. That objective was achieved, but George Russell and Max Verstappen remained out of reach because McLaren simply lacked enough outright performance.
The step backwards compared with McLaren’s form over the previous two months should therefore be interpreted in that context. Andrea Stella’s team believes the extensive new package itself worked as intended, but Baku was not necessarily the best venue on which to judge its full potential.
Sepang should provide a much more representative benchmark. The Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia will become an important test of McLaren’s targets for the final two months of the season and could help establish whether Baku was simply a temporary interruption in the MCL40’s development curve.
The expectation among McLaren’s rivals is that the Malaysian asphalt and circuit characteristics will help the Woking car considerably more than Baku did. The combination also makes the 2026 Bahrain GP at Sepang one of the most important weekends in McLaren’s late-season push.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri add costly mistakes
Car performance was not the only reason McLaren left Azerbaijan empty-handed. Both drivers contributed significantly to a weekend the team will want to forget.
Lando Norris made a mistake at the Turn 5-6 chicane, allowing Lewis Hamilton to attack and overtake him on the main straight. Norris then ran deep at Turn 1 on lap 30, costing himself almost ten seconds and two positions.
Franco Colapinto’s mistake at the restart subsequently denied Norris the chance to recover while using the softer and faster compound. Even then, making significant progress would have been difficult without a clear straight-line speed advantage.
The most expensive mistake in terms of points, however, came from Oscar Piastri. During what had otherwise been one of his strongest weekends of the season alongside Suzuka, the Australian threw away the opportunity when he ran long at Turn 1 while defending from Isack Hadjar.
From Baku to Baku, Oscar Piastri’s last 12 months have represented a striking contrast with the version of the Australian who appeared to have the World Championship firmly under control during the first nine months of the previous season.
Sepang could play directly to McLaren’s strengths
The Sepang International Circuit should be substantially better suited to the MCL40. Its layout gives McLaren more opportunity to exploit the car’s high-downforce performance and potentially challenge Mercedes on more favourable terms.
There is historical evidence that outright engine performance and minimum drag do not necessarily determine the competitive order in Malaysia. In two of the last three Formula 1 events held at Sepang, the benchmark cars included the SF15-T and RB13 despite both having power or aerodynamic-efficiency disadvantages relative to their main rivals.
During qualifying in 2017, the 300 km/h threshold was exceeded at only three points around the lap. Sepang also lacks major traction zones demanding particularly high levels of electrical energy deployment throughout the lap.
That combination suggests cars that struggled at Baku could find considerably more favourable conditions in Malaysia. Pirelli’s tyre selection and Sepang’s characteristics could also create a very different technical picture from Azerbaijan, with the Sepang tyre compounds expected to change the demands placed on the cars.
McLaren to introduce track-specific MCL40 parts at Sepang
Sepang will not only offer McLaren a more suitable circuit on which to evaluate its latest developments. Autoracer can also reveal that the Woking team will introduce several track-specific components on the MCL40 this weekend.
Those parts will complement the extensive package that debuted in Azerbaijan rather than representing another complete development step. The objective will be to optimise the existing car for a venue where high downforce matters more and where the power and efficiency disadvantages exposed so clearly in Baku should carry less weight.
For McLaren, that makes Sepang an important dividing line. A return to the competitive trend established since Budapest would strengthen the argument that Azerbaijan was simply a circuit-specific setback. Another difficult weekend, however, would make the 72-point gap to Ferrari increasingly challenging to close before the end of the season.
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