McLaren’s defence of its constructors’ championship has been anything but smooth.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
After a dominant 2025, the MCL40 has struggled to match Mercedes and Ferrari, with reliability disasters compounding the pain.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
A double non-start in China, Oscar Piastri’s crash on the way to the grid in Melbourne and a disastrous Canadian Grand Prix weekend left Andrea Stella’s team haemorrhaging points.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Even when the car ran cleanly, a deficit of up to a second per lap to Mercedes underlined just how far the reigning champions had fallen.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Hungary, however, offered a glimmer of hope. A significant upgrade package centred on a new floor transformed the MCL40, delivering pole position and a dominant victory for Lando Norris, his first win of 2026.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
McLaren sit third in the standings, 159 points behind Mercedes, but the momentum has shifted.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
So, can they claw their way back into contention? Cast your vote in the poll below.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren’s defence of its constructors’ championship has been anything but smooth.\u00a0 After a dominant 2025, the MCL40 has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-850402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850402","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=850402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}