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Reigning constructors' champions McLaren have completed fewer race laps than any team on the 2025 grid, a striking reversal for the Woking outfit that lifted the title just months ago. The British team has managed only 503 race laps across the opening rounds, trailing even Aston Martin, which has been visibly wrestling with its own power unit troubles yet has still logged 520 laps. For a squad that entered the season expecting to challenge Mercedes at the front, the statistics expose a reliability problem that has already cost McLaren three full race distances.
Lando Norris retired from the Monaco Grand Prix last weekend with power unit failure, his second consecutive DNF. The reigning world champion had already parked his MCL42 in Canada two weeks earlier with similar issues. Before that, a pre-race problem in China prevented him from taking the start altogether. His teammate Oscar Piastri has not been spared either: the Australian was withdrawn from the grid in China and crashed on the formation lap in Australia. Between them, McLaren's drivers have missed the equivalent of three full grands prix through mechanical or incident-related non-starts.
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Mercedes gap and mounting pressure
McLaren entered 2026 as the team to beat, having edged Red Bull to the constructors' title last season. But Mercedes have set the early pace, and McLaren's deficit has been compounded by an inability to simply finish races. The power unit, supplied by Mercedes HPP, has been the primary culprit in Norris's recent retirements, though the team has not yet disclosed whether the failures stem from installation issues, cooling integration, or batch-related defects. What is clear is that the drip-feed of lost points has left McLaren third in the constructors' standings, already 78 points behind Mercedes.
Piastri's grid incidents, meanwhile, point to a broader fragility. The formation lap crash in Melbourne was driver error, but the pre-race withdrawal in Shanghai suggested a systemic problem with sign-off procedures or sensor reliability. Taken together, McLaren's season has the hallmarks of a team struggling to translate winter form into operational discipline.
Red Bull also struggling for consistency
Red Bull Racing have not escaped the reliability trend either. The Austrian team has completed 549 race laps, placing them in the lower half of the lap count table. Max Verstappen retired on the opening lap in Monaco after contact and failed to finish in China due to a suspected drivetrain issue. His teammate Isack Hadjar, promoted from the junior programme this season, retired from the season opener in Melbourne with a hydraulics failure.
Red Bull's troubles are less acute than McLaren's, but they represent a departure from the metronomic reliability that defined their dominance in recent seasons. Verstappen has been vocal in team debriefs about the need to recover the operational margin that once made Red Bull untouchable over a full campaign.
No team unscathed in 2026
Not a single team has completed every racing lap available this season. Every constructor has recorded at least one DNF, a reflection of the technical demands introduced by the revised power unit regulations and the tighter cost cap squeeze on testing and redundancy. Only two drivers, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Lewis Hamilton, both at Mercedes, have finished every lap they have started. Ferrari lead the lap count with 726, a testament to both pace and durability that has helped Charles Leclerc mount a credible title challenge.
McLaren now face a pivotal stretch. The next three rounds offer varied demands, and the team must demonstrate that the recent failures were isolated rather than symptomatic. If the pattern continues, the constructors' title defence will slip beyond recovery long before the summer break
Azerbaijan Grand Prix
I. Hadjar
A. Antonelli
C. Leclerc
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