Lando Norris and McLaren Entrenched in Catch-Up Battle After Bahrain Test, Stella Says
McLaren enters the final pre-season stretch having confirmed a gap to the front runners, a situation that will affect drivers including lando norris as the team prepares for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Andrea Stella described the second pre-season test in Bahrain as clarifying the pecking order and said McLaren finished testing with a clearer read on the MCL40’s potential.
Andrea Stella: Ferrari and Mercedes ‘the teams to beat’
Team principal Andrea Stella assessed the outcome of the two Bahrain test sessions and concluded that Ferrari and Mercedes emerged with a measurable advantage. Stella said the second test in Bahrain reinforced the view that those two teams sit at the top of the competitive order, while McLaren remains “not far” behind and comfortably part of the expected top four group.
Stella warned that testing figures can be misleading but nonetheless framed the recent running as confirmation of the hierarchy ahead of the first race. The immediate effect of that confirmation is tactical: McLaren must focus on extracting more performance from its package to close the identified gap before the Australian Grand Prix on March 6–8.
Bahrain International Circuit: MCL40 testing and sign-offs
The second and final pre-season test at the Bahrain International Circuit provided McLaren with the opportunity to validate the MCL40 across a long checklist. Stella said the team signed off the planned items for functionality, reliability and “race-ability, ” allowing engineers to complete many laps and accumulate learning across set-up, aerodynamic optimisation and tyre work.
That testing regimen produced concrete benefits: the car behaved reliably, test elements were completed, and the team was able to experiment with optimisation of the power unit — a detail Stella highlighted as a “big ticket” item. Because the team amassed extensive running, staff gained progressive performance improvements each day, translating test time into a clearer picture of the MCL40’s exploitable potential.
What this means for Lando Norris and McLaren’s campaign
For drivers such as lando norris the practical implication is straightforward: the team has narrowed unknowns but must now convert reliability and incremental gains into outright pace on race weekends. The cause-and-effect dynamic is clear — the Bahrain programme’s successful sign-offs produced a better-understood car, but the confirmation that Ferrari and Mercedes currently hold an advantage means McLaren must intensify development and set-up work to change the competitive balance.
What makes this notable is the timing: with the Australian Grand Prix scheduled for March 6–8, the window for translating test learnings into race-winning performance is compact. The team’s ability to refine aerodynamic settings, tyre exploitation and power unit deployment between now and the first round will directly affect starting positions and race strategies in Melbourne.
Stella cast the testing campaign in a cautiously positive light, underscoring reliability and the steady accumulation of performance. The broader implication is that McLaren’s season-opening prospects will hinge not only on the MCL40’s baseline competitiveness but on how rapidly engineers can close the margin that Bahrain’s running suggested still exists to Ferrari and Mercedes.
