Why McLaren was so much slower than Mercedes on Baku’s straights

For all the talk of rivals catching Mercedes, which has held fire on its more significant upgrades until next weekend’s Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia, the Brackley team has been able to weather the storm by excelling on some of the most power sensitive circuits like Monza and Baku, vindicating its patience. 

But while Mercedes’ dominant power unit package helps explain its gap to Ferrari and Red Bull, George Russell’s scarcely believable eight-tenth gap to McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was less straightforward to digest. Lando Norris fared even worse, 1.1s behind in Baku qualifying.

Compared to Piastri, Russell made the difference by having better energy deployment through sector two, before motoring away on Baku’s ultra-long straight, where his top speed was up to 10km/h higher than the Australian. In the race, Russell also enjoyed a leisurely cruise until a double safety car made things interesting for him at the end, setting up a grandstand finish with Max Verstappen.

When gaps between two otherwise closely matched teams sharing the same power unit are so vast, there are usually several compounding factors at play, and that’s also what appeared to be the case in Azerbaijan.

To begin with, Baku isn’t McLaren’s happiest of hunting grounds. The MCL40 has continued a trend from its predecessors in that it’s not the most competitive in low-speed corners, which the 6km Baku circuit almost exclusively features. McLaren’s high-downforce prowess, which yielded wins in Hungary and Zandvoort and should have led to another victory for Norris in Madrid, counted for little.

McLaren’s other aerodynamic weakness, a relative lack of efficiency on the straights, was also exposed despite the team bringing a suite of upgrades to generate more efficient downforce in all corner types. “The upgrades worked well throughout the weekend, we added some lap time to the car,” said team boss Andrea Stella. “Somehow, we didn’t see the effect of the upgrades because our car in general does not perform very well in these kinds of corners, so we would have needed a much bigger set to make a difference in Baku.”

Without wanting to overlook Russell’s return to form either, that again doesn’t explain a gap of eight tenths. While McLaren feels its understanding of its Mercedes power unit, and its collaboration with Mercedes HPP, has improved compared to the start of the year, Stella acknowledged the team hadn’t optimised its power unit as well for the race as it did in qualifying “and we paid a price in the race”.

One baked in factor contributing to a top-speed deficit is the gear ratios it picked at the start of the year. The MCL40 is geared shorter than the Mercedes, costing it some top end speed on the likes of Monza and Baku.

“If we had to do it again, I think we would re-ratio to be closer to where Mercedes are,” McLaren’s technical director Neil Houldey said earlier this summer. “There are some performance opportunities that we can take because the ratios are shorter. We end up shifting less into lower gears around corners, potentially on restarts, things like that.

“But then when you’re looking at the high-speed side, I think you’d probably take what the other teams have got. So it’s a couple of compromises in either direction. It’s a small lap time, but all these small little lap times add up to be some decent lap time performance.”

McLaren elected not to use its one joker to make a mid-season gearing adjustment, opting to spend resources elsewhere instead.

“It is very apparent that it is not a single factor,” said Stella. “Certainly, we’ve always talked quite openly and transparently that we need to improve the aerodynamic drag of the car. But at the same time there’s a few factors which refer to our ratios, for instance we need to look whether we are on the right ratios to compete in circuits in which you have this sort of top speeds.

“And at the same time when we look at the data and we compare with MGP, we see that our power unit was not optimised. I think while for qualifying we managed to exploit pretty much the most that was available in the power unit, there’s a few items that we were not able to optimise, and we paid a price in the race.”

Lando Norris was collateral damage in Franco Colapinto’s Turn 1 clash with Pierre Gasly

Photo by: Alex Pantling / LAT Images via Getty Images

As to why Norris, who had been hitting his best form yet over the summer, had such a difficult weekend compared to an improving Piastri, it turns out the world champion had his own specific gremlins to deal with. The team found a power deficit in qualifying, believed to be linked to a fuel injection issue, that returned in the grand prix, while Norris didn’t have his cleanest race and struggled for pace on the medium tyres.

“We occasionally saw the same problem during the race, but not as systematic as in qualifying,” Stella explained. “Definitely there’s a significant opportunity on the topic of fuel injection that we see occasionally also on Oscar’s car during the race.

“In addition to that, Lando was overtaken by Verstappen, who was a quicker car. Lando was struggling a bit with the medium tyres. But credit to Oscar, Oscar managed to keep Verstappen behind. On Lando’s side, we were struggling a little bit with power unit deployment.

“And also, Lando was having some inconsistencies in his driving, when he was overtaken by Hamilton, he had a lock-up and he had a few mistakes that meant that cars behind were within range. And when they are within range, then we struggle to defend, which goes back to the point on top speed.”

Norris was furious after being a collateral victim of Alpine’s Franco Colapinto spearing into his team-mate Pierre Gasly. But the Briton contributed to his own downfall by going off at Turn 1 right before the safety car, which cost him three positions and dumped him into the danger zone on the subsequent restart.

“I would say that for Lando this was one of the most difficult events in general that he has experienced in 2026,” Stella concluded. “It’s something that we need to take away, looking at whatever can be improved. But I would say most of the opportunities lie on the team side and on the car side, because we need to be able to offer our drivers a car that is more and just more consistent in terms of predictability.”

Oscar Piastri suffered a monumental lock-up trying to hold off Isack Hadjar

Photo by: Alex Pantling / LAT Images via Getty Images

With Piastri also locking up at Turn 1 later on, costing him a potential podium as he dropped down to 13th at the finish, the bitter end result of a series of minor problems, execution errors and shortcomings is a point-less weekend for the Woking squad.

“We had issues and some mistakes, but at the same time I think we paid for some fundamental limitations of our package in this kind of circuit,” Stella’s concluded.

“We were not fast enough in the corners, but at the same time and mainly we were not fast enough in the straights. This continuously exposed our drivers to being attacked and having to spend their race watching the mirrors rather than thinking about how they can progress in the race.”

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