Two wins on the bounce and suddenly everyone wants to talk about a McLaren title fight. Andrea Stella isn’t one of them, and for good reason: Monza is coming, and it could expose exactly why this Zandvoort momentum might be a mirage.
Lando Norris has now won back to back races, cutting Kimi Antonelli’s championship lead to 83 points after victories in Budapest and at Zandvoort. It’s the kind of run that gets pundits reaching for the word ‘comeback’. It’s also the kind of run that means precisely nothing until McLaren proves it can do it somewhere that isn’t tailor made for the car.
Brundle’s Warning to Mercedes
Alex Brundle isn’t messing about. Speaking on F1 TV, he pointed out that Zandvoort and the Hungaroring are both circuits where Mercedes’ usual energy management advantage counts for less, and that Monza will be a very different story.
“You’ve got to say, though, we’re coming off a pair of circuits that are less energetically starved in the way that we saw Mercedes dominate at Silverstone and be really strong at Spa. There are going to be those circuits coming, and that effect hasn’t gone away. It’s going to be interesting to see how this McLaren form, for example, rolls on into Monza. If it’s the same there, then I think Mercedes have got a problem on their hands.” – Alex Brundle
That’s the crux of it. Norris beat Antonelli by 11.5 seconds at Zandvoort, which sounds emphatic until you remember the layout suited McLaren’s strengths almost perfectly. Monza does not do McLaren any favours by design, and that’s precisely why Stella is refusing to get carried away.
Stella’s Cold Shower
Ask Stella how confident this run makes him feel about the second half of the season and you get the sporting equivalent of a shrug. Speaking to Motorsport.com, the McLaren boss made clear he’s not interested in extrapolating two good weekends into a title narrative.
“The real approach that we have is just race for race. There is not much more that you can influence than just maximising what is available next. The next race is in Monza, and if we think of the demands of Zandvoort and Hungary, and then the demands of Monza, we are in a completely different regime.” – Andrea Stella
Stella’s caution isn’t false modesty, it’s arithmetic. Zandvoort and Budapest both reward a car strong through medium speed corners, which happens to be exactly where the MCL40 shines. Monza is the opposite: long straights, heavy braking zones, low downforce, and a premium on straight-line efficiency. Norris himself admitted his car’s performance in slow corners on Saturday at Zandvoort was, in his words, “nowhere near good enough”. Monza won’t forgive that kind of weakness the way Zandvoort did.
The Energy Management Problem Hasn’t Gone Away
Here’s the bit McLaren fans conveniently forget when they’re busy printing title odds: Monza is what’s known in the paddock as ‘energy starved’, meaning the power unit’s ability to deploy and recover energy efficiently becomes critical again. That was precisely the area where McLaren was miles behind Mercedes’ works team at the start of the year, before a double DNS in China and a wobbly opening quarter that made this title talk look faintly ridiculous.
Progress has clearly been made since then, helped along by simulation tools McLaren finally got its hands on around Spa. But knowing you’ve improved and proving it at the one circuit where energy management actually decides the race are two very different things. Stella wants that proof before he’ll entertain any bigger conversation.
“We know that aerodynamic drag is not necessarily a strong point of our car. And there is also a lot of braking, for example, which again is not necessarily a strong point of our car.” – Andrea Stella
Translation: McLaren has two structural weaknesses heading into the one weekend that punishes both of them simultaneously. That’s not pessimism, that’s just reading the car correctly.
Palmer’s Reality Check for the Title Talk
Jolyon Palmer reckons Mercedes won’t be losing much sleep over Norris regardless of what happens at Monza, largely because the gap is still enormous and Antonelli keeps delivering. Palmer flagged Baku as the race Mercedes has actually built its upgrade plan around, with Monza dismissed as too much of an outlier to read anything into and Madrid too unknown to guess.
“I don’t think they’re going to be losing sleep over Lando right now. He seems like he’s too far away. And when you look at Kimi still putting in the performances very consistently, I would say it’s such a long shot for Norris. But for me, I think you could argue he’s the driver of the season.” – Jolyon Palmer
That last line is the one worth sitting with. Norris might be having the drives of his life, and it still might not matter, because 83 points is 83 points and this grid doesn’t hand out mercy laps. If McLaren can’t back up Zandvoort at a circuit that actively works against its car’s strengths, this “title fight” chatter dies quietly at Monza and everyone moves on to talking about Antonelli’s coronation instead.
Why Monza Actually Matters
Norris himself, speaking before Zandvoort in comments to RacingNews365, admitted street circuits remain his biggest question mark and that the car is “still enormously difficult to drive”, requiring a level of understanding built up over months rather than something you simply switch on. That’s a driver being honest about a car that can be devastatingly fast in the right window and mediocre outside it. Monza, with its unique demands, will tell us which version of the MCL40 turns up when the conditions aren’t stacked in its favour.
None of this stops the McLaren hype train, of course. Two wins in a row is genuinely impressive stuff, and Norris deserves credit for dragging performances out of a car that spent the early part of the season an unreliable mess. But Stella’s caution about Norris versus Piastri’s alarming slump tells you everything about how fragile this whole operation still is underneath the winning streak. One driver flying, one driver struggling, and a team boss who won’t even say the word “title” out loud. That’s not the profile of a team about to steamroll the second half of the season.
The Verdict
Monza next week will either validate McLaren’s revival as genuine title form or expose it as a two race purple patch built on circuits that happened to suit the car. Given Stella’s own admission that drag and braking remain weaknesses, and given that Monza is precisely the circuit where those weaknesses get punished hardest, don’t be surprised if the McLaren hype cools rather sharply once the cars hit the long straights at Monza next week. Mercedes might not need to panic just yet, whatever Brundle thinks.
