For a team that arrived in Monte Carlo as the reigning Monaco winners through Lando Norris, McLaren's 2026 Grand Prix was a weekend to bury. Norris retired from the race, Oscar Piastri trailed home a distant and anonymous fourth, and the post-race conversation was less about pace than about why the team never looked like contending around a circuit that should suit it.
Norris's afternoon ended with another of the unexplained failures that have punctuated the new engine era.
"Once again in this new era of regulations, there are just random DNFs that crop up — Max Verstappen having a DNF, Lando Norris having a DNF, again McLaren," noted the P1 with Matt and Tommy podcast, recorded at the circuit.
The same hosts argued Norris had the pace to climb but nowhere to use it. "Lando Norris was stuck behind Pierre Gasly today. He was so much quicker. He was basically pushing him round the circuit," one said, describing a race in which barely an overtake was completed all afternoon before Norris's retirement.
It was Piastri's race that drew the sharpest analysis. Peter Windsor called the Australian's fourth place "a desultry, disappointing P4 for McLaren," and could not hide his surprise at how comfortably Piastri was beaten by cars he should have been clearing.
"This is a McLaren with all these upgrades they've been doing, and Oscar Piastri getting blown away like that — it was unbelievable, really," Windsor said. He pointed out that even Isack Hadjar, nursing engine-management problems in the Racing Bull, and George Russell were pulling away from Piastri, who appeared to have cooked his tyres early.
"Maybe they were scared into being boring after making that choice to start on intermediates in Canada," Windsor suggested, referencing the wet-tyre call that backfired a week earlier.
There was scrutiny of Norris's mindset too. Windsor noted the McLaren driver had spent the opening moments on the radio complaining that Russell was out of position — at the very moment Norris should have been concentrating on his own launch. To Windsor, it hinted at a driver "a little bit less targeted than he was a year or so ago."
Not everyone was as harsh. Reviewing the race, Formula Duck was more exasperated than damning, ribbing Norris only for retiring quietly rather than parking the car to trigger the yellow flags, and noting that McLaren — usually the benchmark — were simply absent from a fight that Mercedes and Ferrari controlled all weekend.
The numbers underline the slump. Antonelli has now won five races in a row and leads the championship by a margin the Matt and Tommy hosts openly wondered might already be beyond everyone else. McLaren leave Monaco with a single car in the points and plenty to explain. They head to Barcelona next weekend, where overtaking is possible and excuses are harder to find.
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