The 2026 season could hardly have begun in a worse fashion for McLaren. Even if a black comet had hovered above their garage and someone in the pit lane had started humming a funeral march, it would have been difficult to imagine a more disastrous Sunday.
When the lights went out for the Chinese Grand Prix, two empty grid slots immediately caught everyone's attention. Both McLaren drivers were still stuck in the garage. A double Did Not Start for last year's champions, zero points, and a weekend that turned into a nightmare—following an already disappointing opening round in Australia.
According to team principal Andrea Stella, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were sidelined by two separate power unit issues.
Everything began to unravel on Norris' car. Hours before the race, McLaren mechanics were working around it like surgeons trying to revive a patient whose heart had suddenly stopped. When Norris failed to appear on the grid, it became clear that something was seriously wrong. TV cameras barely left the McLaren garage as speculation intensified with every passing minute.
Piastri at least made it to the grid. But moments before the start, another failure struck, forcing the Australian's car to be wheeled back into the pits.
"It was a bad day," Stella admitted. "Very disappointing, because we come here to race."
What actually went wrong?
As McLaren prepared Norris' car for the race, the team discovered they simply couldn't start the engine. The investigation quickly pointed toward the Mercedes hybrid system. Under the 2026 regulations, every Formula 1 power unit consists of an internal combustion engine, turbocharger, battery, control electronics, and the Motor Generator Unit-Kinetic (MGU-K), which converts braking energy into electrical power.
In Norris' case, the issue centered on the battery.
"We couldn't establish communication with that component," Stella explained.
Replacing the battery would have taken too long, so McLaren tried another solution: swapping the Electronic Control Unit (ECU), hoping a fresh control system would restore communication between the battery and the car.
The ECU is a standardized component supplied by Motion Applied, the company responsible for the software platform used across Formula 1. Since 2021 it has operated independently from McLaren Group, and every team receives identical units through FIA's centralized supply process. Sometimes electronic issues can even be addressed by changing the steering wheel, since it serves as the driver's interface with many of the car's software systems—as happened during George Russell's qualifying troubles just a day earlier.
"We reprogrammed the car," Stella said, "but we couldn't solve the issue. Lando's car simply wasn't capable of leaving the garage."
Then, while preparing Piastri's car on the grid after the pre-race ceremonies, another electrical fault emerged.
"The car simply wouldn't start," Stella explained. "In some ways it was similar to Lando's issue, but Oscar's problem was easier to diagnose."
He declined to specify which electrical component had failed. Although the engineers understood what had gone wrong, there simply wasn't enough time to repair the car before the race began. "It is highly unusual to suffer two fatal failures almost simultaneously, both involving the electrical side of the power unit," Stella added. At this point, McLaren still doesn't know whether the root cause lies within Mercedes' hardware or in the way McLaren integrated the power unit into its own chassis.
The team and Mercedes High Performance Powertrains will jointly examine the failed components before the Japanese Grand Prix.
"We understand what failed," Stella said, "but we still don't fully understand why it failed."
McLaren may arrive at Suzuka without a definitive answer. The team insists, however, that the issue did not originate in the components it manufactures itself.
A bigger picture
After beating Mercedes to the Constructors' Championship over the previous two seasons, McLaren has opened 2026 already trailing its engine supplier, which now appears to be the benchmark under Formula 1's new regulations. Ferrari has also taken a significant step forward, overtaking Red Bull and emerging as the second-fastest team.
Whenever Formula 1 undergoes a major technical reset—especially one involving an entirely new engine formula—reliability problems are almost inevitable. The last comparable situation came in 2014, when hybrid power units were first introduced.
McLaren isn't alone.
Audi has already recorded one DNS in each of the season's first two races. Nico Hülkenberg lost telemetry before the Australian Grand Prix even began, while Gabriel Bortoleto failed to start in China because of another unresolved issue.
Aston Martin's new Honda power unit has suffered from severe vibrations affecting the battery system, limiting the team's ability to complete full race distances safely. Even Mercedes, despite winning both opening Grands Prix through George Russell in Australia and Kimi Antonelli in China, hasn't enjoyed flawless reliability. During preseason testing, the factory Mercedes team experienced several stoppages after introducing its final-specification 2026 engine.
Customer teams—including McLaren, Williams and Alpine—didn't receive that latest specification until the opening race in Australia. Interestingly, neither Williams nor Alpine has reported similar battery-related failures. In China, battery problems also disrupted Russell's qualifying session. His car briefly stopped on track, and after restarting, gearbox issues appeared before Mercedes finally resolved everything back in the garage.
What does it mean for the championship?
Whatever ultimately caused McLaren's failures, the damage is already significant. After just two races, McLaren trails Mercedes by 80 points in the Constructors' Championship. Norris sits 36 points behind championship leader George Russell.
Piastri's situation is even bleaker. He trails by 48 points, with his sixth-place finish in the Shanghai Sprint accounting for the only meaningful result of his season so far. Those 19 Sprint laps remain the only competitive race distance he has completed in 2026.
The situation is made even worse by the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix because of the conflict in the Middle East. With two fewer races on the calendar, McLaren has fewer opportunities to recover lost ground. Stella admitted that he and both drivers watched the Chinese Grand Prix from the garage, studying how Mercedes and Ferrari managed their energy deployment and how the new Pirelli tyres behaved in Shanghai's unusually cool conditions.
But television footage is no substitute for real telemetry. McLaren, recently the dominant force in Formula 1, now finds itself severely limited in its attempt to fight back. An 80-point deficit after two races sounds alarming—but over a season that still contains hundreds of available points, it remains recoverable. A reliable McLaren with genuine race-winning pace can still close the gap.
The greater concern isn't the points. It's the missing data. Every lap completed by Mercedes and Ferrari generates information that McLaren simply doesn't have. Points can be recovered. Knowledge is much harder to catch up on.
