Last year, McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen were all involved in the Formula 1 title fight, and between them they won most of the races.
At Silverstone on Saturday, all three were bit players, as the complexities of the 2026 cars and power units continue to perplex both their creators and the drivers.
While Mercedes and Ferrari battled at the front in qualifying, Norris, Verstappen and Piastri lined up in sixth through eighth – the fastest of the trio almost 0.8 seconds off polesitter Kimi Antonelli. And all three were left somewhat confused by their struggles.
For Verstappen, ongoing power unit deployment issues were particularly painful, as, for once, he was edged out by teammate Isack Hadjar, who had a much cleaner session to take fifth spot.
On top of that, the RB22 wasn’t handling well, and at one time during qualifying, Verstappen proclaimed it a “disaster”.
“The car, yesterday, was already not great,” he said. “I think today we didn’t really seem to make an improvement on that side, so it was pretty much same. But at the same time, also very slow on the straight. For whatever reason, my side of the garage from the first lap I was just down on power, and around here, when you’re down on power, you spend more time on the straight. So you burn your battery more,and that even has a bigger effect in the last sector, where basically out of Turn 15[Stowe], there is no power, so I just kept losing a lot on the straights. Plus a bad balance, so it was just very, very poor.”
Expanding on the handling issues, he said: “In the sprint race, we were getting destroyed in the very high-speed. I had George [Russell] behind me, who was catching me in dirty air in the high-speed, so that says quite a lot. But even in the low-speed, I’m just not happy with how the car has been handling the whole weekend. So a clear disconnect.”
Missing out on horsepower added to those handling woes.
“It’s just not going forward; it’s not pulling the same as what it was. On a track like this, where that is key, you need as much power as you can, and it’s even extra painful. I’ve tried a lot of different things throughout qualifying, but it was just always the same. So there is a clear problem, and that’s something that also worries me. For tomorrow, there’s actually no point to race, I guess…”
That was a pretty frank admission from the sport’s ultimate racer, and a reflection of the frustration he’s felt for much of the year, notwithstanding a decent run to P2 in Austria just a week ago.
In recent days, Verstappen’s name has been linked to a potential move to McLaren in 2028 or thereabouts. If the Dutchman is running out of patience at Red Bull, he won’t have found much solace by looking at McLaren’s MCL40s, running this weekend not in papaya but in a curious white and green stripe arrangement that commemorates Bruce McLaren’s debut at Monaco in 1966.
The Mercedes power unit was not the main issue for McLaren; it was the sheer lack of aerodynamic performance relative to the top guys.
Clive Mason//Getty Images
Indeed, inside the car, Norris felt that his final lap in Q3 was a good one – the stopwatch simply told a different story.
“Just tough, we still don’t have any pace,” he said when asked by Road & Track about his session. “It was seven-tenths off pole, and I thought my lap was pretty amazing. I was very happy with my lap, improved in every single corner, and I felt like I got everything out of the car. So we’re just slow; the car was slow in thestraights, and we’re slow in all the corners. There’s nothing more I can say apart from that. The car is not very efficient at the minute, which makes it pretty unbelievable that we finished P3 yesterday, considering we’re seven-tenths off. There’s no excuses – the car’s not good enough, and we know that. And we just have to keep working hard, that’s it.”
As Norris noted, Silverstone is a real test of aerodynamic efficiency, and windy conditions tipped things over the edge. At times, Lando’s teammate Piastri wasvisibly struggling to keep the car on the road.
“I think today’s conditions, in particular, have definitely exposed where we’re weak,” said the Australian. “I think when the grip is good, when things are consistent, we can be in or close to the fight. Yesterday, one-tenth and we would have been third on the [sprint] grid. I think when things are consistent, we look okay, and we mask some of our issues. Whereas today the conditions were very, very tough. There’s nowhere to hide around here, so it’s not a huge surprise that we’ve struggled. To be so far off is probably a bit more than we expected.”
McLaren boss Andrea Stella provided a typically sound explanation.
“I think this is a circuit in which we have a little bit less grip overall than we have had, for instance, in Austria,” said Stella. “The car slides a lot. Today, it was not only windy, but it was gusty, and when you have these conditions, I think there’s apremium for the cars that have the best behavior in the corners, the best grip in thecorners. So I’m not surprised in a way that Ferrari and Mercedes, they opened up the gap to Red Bull and McLaren today, where the grip conditions were more difficult.”
It was extraordinary to hear the three drivers who, between them, won 22 of the 24 races last season all sound so unhappy – and seemingly unable to do much other than hope that their teams can turn things around in the coming races. What a difference a year makes.