Is McLaren back in the game? The factors behind its Japan F1 podium

Team principal Andrea Stella cautions McLaren, albeit buoyed by its first Formula 1 podium of 2026, still has its work cut out to genuinely close the gap to Mercedes.

Having finally made the start of a race at the Japanese Grand Prix after crashing out in Australia and suffering from a battery failure in China, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri delivered one of his better qualifying laps to take third on the grid, three tenths behind polesitter Kimi Antonelli.

With both Mercedes cars suffering from a terrible getaway off the line, Piastri darted around the outside and swept into the lead on the downhill blast into Turn 1 – a position which he only briefly relinquished to Russell on lap eight before immediately re-passing him, in a classic 2026 power-unit-led switch around.

The Japanese Grand Prix felt more like a hybrid race between 2026’s divisive battery jousting and a more traditional track-position race, in which clear air demonstrably made a huge difference. It goes some way towards explaining why Piastri was able to take control of the race after being catapulted into the lead and why Russell was unable to find a (sustainable) way past over the opening stint.

A lap-21 safety car following Oliver Bearman’s hair-raising crash changed everything, though, with Russell’s team-mate Antonelli the main benefactor as the Italian youngster took a cheap pitstop to lead the restart. In clear air Antonelli was much more able to flex the W17’s muscle, and that’s where the real difference with McLaren became much more apparent, Mercedes’ lead driver in Suzuka beating the Australian by 13.7 seconds. World champion Lando Norris was 10 further seconds behind in sixth after playing catch up all weekend following reliability issues.

Oscar Piastri, McLaren

Photo by: Mark Thompson / Getty Images

Piastri felt the safety car could have cost him a potential win, which is quite a turnaround for a team that finished over 50 seconds in arrears in Melbourne on the only previous occasion one of its cars even started a grand prix this year. So, where does McLaren’s form suddenly come from?

Stella and Piastri were both the first to admit their pace in Suzuka came as a surprise. “I think today we confirmed the progress that we saw yesterday in qualifying, progress that allowed Oscar to lead the race after a very good start,” Stella said when debriefing the media. “We were surprised ourselves, especially at the end of the first stint, where we not only were able to keep Russell behind, but we were also opening the gap at the end of the first stint. So we thought that we should [pit] first, so that we could retain the lead, because we wanted to give winning the race a go.

“We will never know whether, without the safety car, it would have been possible or not. I think it would have been possible against Russell, because we saw that Russell was trying to overtake even Ferrari. And I think today McLaren and Ferrari were on a similar pace. Antonelli, though, he had a faster pace than anybody else.”

Stella is still convinced both Mercedes and Ferrari have a better car aerodynamically, as evidenced by higher cornering speeds. But by catching up on its understanding of the Mercedes power unit, McLaren is both getting closer to the works team and flexing some of that HPP muscle compared to Ferrari.

Mercedes’ George Russell chasing the McLaren of Piastri.

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

“Here we were on par with Ferrari,” the Italian said. “When we look at the overlays in the race, you can see that Ferrari still retains some advantage in the corners. Definitely, their car is able to generate more grip than our car. I think we benefit from a power unit that overall is more competitive.”

That convergence in power unit performance between the Mercedes teams made it tougher for Russell to make enough of a difference to pass Piastri, too, but McLaren believes there is another factor at play that flattered its performance at Suzuka, which had been largely repaved for this race and provided excellent surface grip.

“In the previous races we have seen that when there is front [tyre] graining, we seem to be slightly more susceptible to this phenomenon than Ferrari and Mercedes,” he pointed out. “There is a combination of factors that allowed us to stay in the race today. Here, the grip from the tarmac is very high. I think it helps if you don’t have great performance from the chassis. Like I said before, I think Ferrari and Mercedes have better performance.”

Whether Piastri was robbed of a win or not, two weeks on from neither car making the start at all in China, the Japanese weekend was a huge shot in the arm for McLaren. But it doesn’t change the intense recovery programme the team is on. All eyes are already on Miami, when it is set to deploy what is expected to be a substantial upgrade package. But unlike 2023, when it famously used the Florida race to make a big jump forward, this time all of its rivals will be attempting the same.

“Overall, good news, but it doesn’t change our objective,” he cautioned. “We have to improve the performance of our chassis.”