McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has acknowledged that the squad \u201cdefinitely want to defend the championship\u201d amid their best weekend of the season so far in Miami, with the Italian conceding that the papaya outfit \u201cknow we can further develop our car\u201d.<\/p>\n
Following a tricky start to the campaign \u2013 which, amongst other challenging moments, saw both Lando Norris<\/a> and Oscar Piastri<\/a> fail to start the Chinese Grand Prix \u2013 McLaren<\/a> hinted at more to come in Japan, where Piastri sealed their first podium of 2026 in second place.<\/p>\n Their fortunes improved further when the campaign resumed in Miami, with Norris winning the Sprint at the wheel of the newly-upgraded MCL40 before both drivers shared the rostrum via a P2 and P3 result in Sunday\u2019s race.<\/p>\n However, when asked if he had seen enough from the team\u2019s performance at the Miami International Autodrome to suggest that they could successfully defend both the Drivers\u2019 and Teams\u2019 titles, Stella<\/a> exercised caution whilst admitting that this remains the target.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if we now start to consider championships at the end of the season, then I think we need to be a bit careful because we are just at the fourth race,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have just delivered our first upgrade, we are in Miami and McLaren looks like they traditionally have done very well in Miami, so it could be that the way we develop our cars kind of suits this circuit, so we will have to see more.<\/p>\n \u201cBut at the same time, because it’s only the fourth race and we have scored a good chunk of points even compared to Mercedes, we know that we can further develop our car.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have said already before Miami that the championship is not a sign-off, so our logic is to look at the long term, try and defend the championship, but as soon as we say that, we come back in the present and we do the right thing today because there’s really not much point in thinking so far forward, but definitely we want to defend the championship.\u201d<\/p>\n Stella went on to praise championship leader Kimi Antonelli<\/a>, before suggesting that McLaren are \u201cprobably the strongest pair\u201d in terms of their driver line-up.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we should really pay credit to the quality of the driving, the consistency, the speed in both a single lap in the race and overall execution. We should pay credit to what Kimi is showing and is actually delivering on track,\u201d said Stella.<\/p>\n \u201cI would have said after testing that George [Russell]<\/a> was in a stronger position, which was the case until Australia, but for some reason things seem to have turned around. Once again, I think this is thanks to the good work that Kimi must be doing with his engineers and with the people around him.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s always a group of people around the driver, and success comes because this synergy works. I think Kimi must be having all these conditions in place. Well done to Kimi, well done to Mercedes<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the same time, I think we have seen for McLaren that in Japan, with a car that wasn’t competitive yet, Oscar was in condition to fight for the win again and score a podium. Oscar, confirming a podium finish here, and Lando, one win in the Sprint and in the fight for the victory here.<\/p>\n \u201cI think when we look in particular at the Constructors\u2019 Championship, I think we are, from a driver’s point of view, probably the strongest pair. We want to capitalise on this strength that we have at McLaren, but we need to make the car a little bit faster.\u201d<\/p>\n After the opening four rounds, McLaren currently sit in third place of the Teams\u2019 Championship<\/a> on 94 points, while Norris and Piastri are fourth and sixth in the Drivers\u2019 standings<\/a> with 51 and 43 points respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has acknowledged that the squad \u201cdefinitely want to defend the championship\u201d amid their…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-663765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}