McLaren “in a better situation” with race starts compared to last year

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says the team has made progress in an area which was often a weakness for them last year.

He believes the first three standing starts of the season have shown McLaren are making better getaways than they did in 2024.

This was a notable weakness for Lando Norris last year. He made a net loss of 12 places on the first lap of races last year, the worst of any driver who completed the whole season, tied with Valtteri Bottas.

Norris’s team mate Oscar Piastri generally made better starts. He made a net gain of six places until the final round, where he was knocked into a spin by Max Verstappen at the first corner and lost 17 positions.

On Sunday weekend Norris ended the first lap higher than he started, something he only managed in two out of 24 grands prix last year. Although Piastri lost a place in the first race of the season in Melbourne, Stella is encouraged by what he has seen of the team’s start performance so far.

“The start from our two drivers was great,” he told Viaplay. “Lando gained a position. Oscar had a very good take-off from pole position.

“From the start point of view we seem to be in a better situation than we were at times last year. We need to keep this trend.”

Norris’s strong getaway from third on the grid put McLaren on course to score its first one-two of the season.

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“Hopefully, we will have starts from the front of the grid and we can consolidate on the good performance of the car,” said Stella. “Starts are one of the most important things in Formula 1, so another area where we need to check what we are doing and make sure that we are at the top.”

McLaren completed last year without either driver suffering a retirement due to unreliability. Stella said Norris’s brake problem in the final laps at Shanghai shows they need to pay attention to this area.

“Above all we need to make sure that these kind of issues don’t happen anymore because you put such an important result for the team at risk,” he said. “So we definitely have some work to do in terms of reliability.

“We have done very well on reliability last year but this year in a couple of races we had a couple near-misses. So this definitely needs to be addressed.”