To walk away from the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with zero points hurts, but as Motorsport.com Italia reports, the real headache for McLaren runs far deeper than a blank scoreboard. A disaster weekend in Baku saw both MCL40 machines knocked out of contention, yet team principal Andrea Stella refused to hide behind the chaos that ended the races for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Everything imploded on a chaotic restart during lap 36 following a Safety Car period. Franco Colapinto completely misjudged his braking zone into turn one, slamming straight into the side of Norris and destroying his race. Piastri's exit came later through his own mistake, locking up at that same treacherous turn one and sliding helplessly into the runoff area. Two completely different incidents, sure, but they yielded the exact same dismal result for the team.
Even without the crashes, though, this was hardly a layout where the car was going to shine. Stella pointed bluntly to the fundamental limits of their package on a track of this nature, admitting they simply lacked pace both through the corners and down the straightaways. That terminal lack of top speed forced both drivers onto the defensive for practically the entire afternoon, leaving them checking their mirrors instead of hunting down the cars ahead.
Piastri managed the crisis better initially, drawing parallels to his defensive masterclass against Charles Leclerc back in 2024 before a switch to medium tires and a mistake brought his run to an end. Norris faced an even uglier Sunday. His car fought an intermittent fuel injection gremlin first seen in qualifying, alongside power unit delivery headaches, struggles with the medium tyres, and his own mistakes. Yet Stella made it clear where the heavier blame lies, calling it one of the toughest weekends Lando has experienced.
Technical shortcomings go well beyond standard drag issues on the MCL40. Stella pointed to gear ratios needing review for high-speed tracks and a painful delta when comparing telemetry against the works Mercedes cars. While the power unit was fully exploited in qualifying, race trim exposed optimization failures that cost them dearly. On the bright side, the upgrades brought to Baku performed as expected, though the unique Azerbaijani asphalt failed to let them truly flex.
With the 2026 development cycle nearly wrapped up and eyes firmly fixed on next year's machine, the zero points sting. But the true wake-up call from Baku is that even without the collisions, the MCL40 simply wasn't where it needed to be.
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