Stella reacts to ‘disappointing’ double McLaren DNS in China as he highlights biggest downside

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella was left frustrated on a "disappointing day" for the team, as neither Oscar Piastri or reigning World Champion Lando Norris were able to start the Chinese Grand Prix.

Piastri had qualified fifth in Shanghai, one place ahead of his team mate, with Norris the first of the duo to run into issues ahead of Sunday's race.

The Briton's car failed to leave the McLaren garage when the pit lane opened ahead of the race and, despite plenty of work from his crew, he was unable to take the start.

Piastri’s car had made it to the grid in one piece – but an issue was also detected late on with his machine subsequently wheeled back to the garage a few minutes before the formation lap. With no time to fix the issue it means Piastri has failed to start the opening two Grands Prix of 2026 following his pre-race crash in Australia.

“A disappointing day, quite frustrating because we go racing to be on track,” Stella said afterwards. "Today we saw two McLarens in the garage while the other cars were racing.

“What happened today is that on Lando's car, in preparation for the laps to the grid, we saw that there were problems with the electrical side of the power unit. We couldn't communicate with this component. We tried to rectify the problem.

“We tried to change as many parts as possible without having to change that part specifically because it would take a long time and we couldn't have made it to the start of the race. We reprogrammed, but there was no way to fix the problem and Lando's car was simply just not being conditioned to leave the garage.”

Stella confirmed that it was also an electrical issue that cost Piastri his chance to compete – although not the exact same one his team mate suffered.

“Once on the grid, [Piastri’s] car wouldn't fire up again in a similar manner to Lando," McLaren's Team Principal explained. "But actually, on Oscar's side, it was easier to diagnose the problem. And it appears to be a problem with the same power unit component on the electrical side, but a problem of a different nature.

“So, it's quite exceptional and uncharacteristic that you have two terminal problems pretty much at the same time on the same component, which in this case is on the electrical side of the power unit. We will review together with HPP the reason for these faults and, like I've said to everyone in the team and to HPP, we go as one team.”

With such sweeping new regulations in 2026, any lap time lost is costly, with a big development race expected between all the teams as they continue to work out how to best extract pace from their packages.

As a result, losing 56 laps worth of racing with both McLaren is a blow, but Stella highlighted another area that he thought was more costly.

“The most detrimental aspect of not being able to participate in this race is the points in the Championship," he said. "While at the moment, Mercedes seem to be in their own category and we are a little closer to Ferrari, we obviously race with the ambition to compete for important results.

“We are just losing ground. These points could have been important at the end of the season. So, the most important shortcoming of what happened today is not scoring the points.”

McLaren sit third in the Teams’ Championship, one point ahead of Haas and already 80-points adrift of the Silver Arrows. They did at least score with both cars in the Sprint, so did not leave China empty handed.

As to how the two drivers responded to the situation, Stella called it a “tough moment” but was keen to reiterate that this is not the first time McLaren have had difficult times, and that he expects both of his drivers to bounce back.

“If we consider that Oscar has not been able to start a race in the start of the 2026 campaign, that's pretty difficult for Oscar to process," Stella added. "But at the same time, and this was testified and witnessed in the conversation with Lando and Oscar after the race, both remain quite positive.

“I think what we have gone through at McLaren in terms of the journey from 2023 has been such a good journey of developing a culture, a mindset, what we call internally a winner's mindset.

“Just a positive attitude, which focuses us on what we can control. In this case today, there wasn't much we could have controlled, so we just take any possible learning and we go again.”