McLaren team principal Andrea Stella insists Bahrain will be a difficult venue for the team, despite their rivals talking up their potential.
“My expectation is that Bahrain is the most difficult venue for McLaren of the first part of the season,” said Stella in today’s FIA press conference.
McLaren’s rivals pointed to their low tyre degradation at the track during pre-season testing as a reason to expect they would be competitive this weekend. However Lando Norris has said the track will highlight McLaren’s performance deficit in lower-speed corners, a concern Stella shares.
“During the test, I’m not sure we saw that we were enjoying any advantage in terms of first lap [performance],” said Stella.
“The only thing we saw is that the car is gentle on the tyres, which is a feature we couldn’t exploit very much in Suzuka, which was a very low-degradation circuit. This one is a high-degradation circuit, so if anything, that could be our strength.
“But to capitalise on this strength, you have to qualify well. You [mustn’t] be stuck in traffic. There are a few things that we need to get right. And yet, in this kind of low-speed dominated configuration, I’m not sure that McLaren will enjoy much advantage at all.”
Stella was speaking in between the two practice sessions at the circuit today. His team topped the times in second practice, Oscar Piastri lapping half a second quicker than any of the team’s rivals.
McLaren won the first two grands prix of 2025 and narrowly lost the third to Red Bull. Stella dismissed claims the reigning world champions are poised to dominate the season.
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“The MCL39 is certainly a competitive car,” he acknowledged. “It’s faster than last year’s car, which was already fast and reliable. We needed to embrace some innovation and [have] courage to change pretty much the entire car. I cannot thank enough all the men and women at McLaren that delivered the performance we gave ourselves as an objective.
“Having said that, I think the margins are very small. They keep being small. If we look at China in qualifying, it was a bit of a mixed bag. In Japan, in qualifying we got beaten, in the race we got beaten. So I think we have to be quite realistic as to the situation in terms of performance.
“I hear sometimes talk about dominance, which I think is out of place – sometimes it’s [put about] by our competitors. Clearly everyone knows the game, everyone knows how to put pressure or attempt to put pressure on the rivals.
“But we are very grounded people, in fairness, we are very calm. We’re not going to get into this kind of bait. We know that we have to work hard to exploit the potential of the MCL39, and we have to work hard to keep improving the car.”
He denied Max Verstappen’s victory in Japan had alerted McLaren to the threat posed by Red Bull.
“We didn’t need any wake-up call because we were not sleeping and certainly we were not dreaming,” he said. “We were wide awake, knowing that if we don’t capitalise on the full performance of the car, then we will be beaten, and if we capitalise, we may win by a very small margin.
“So for us, this is what we talk about in the team. These are the conversations that happen within the team. All the rest, for me, seems to be a bit built up externally, but it doesn’t represent what is in the numbers, in our view.”
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