Andrea Stella “Encouraged” as McLaren Holds Its Ground Against Mercedes’ Canadian GP Upgrade Blitz
Mercedes arrived in Montreal sitting on an 86-point lead in the Constructors’ Championship, and they brought the biggest upgrade package of the weekend to go with it. It was the Silver Arrows’ first major upgrade push of the season, held back specifically for Canada . The expectation was that they’d stretch the gap.
Instead, McLaren stayed right with them, but team principal Andrea Stella is choosing to treat that as a data point rather than a victory. George Russell took pole for the Canadian Grand Prix , ending Kimi Antonelli ‘s streak of consecutive fastest laps in qualifying, with Antonelli trailing his teammate by just 0. 068 seconds to lock out the Mercedes front row.
McLaren answered with an all-papaya second row, Lando Norris edging Oscar Piastri by half a tenth. Under two tenths separated the McLaren and the lead Mercedes – a gap Stella describes as “encouraging” given the context of what Mercedes brought to the table. He was clear in post-qualifying interviews that McLaren also came to Montreal with upgrades, but the team made a late call to pull back one key piece.
A new front wing had been tested by Norris throughout Friday’s sole practice session, with Piastri also trialling it mid-session, but McLaren reverted both cars to the previous spec for sprint qualifying after it failed to deliver the expected performance gains. In other words, the gap to the front was held while effectively running the Miami car. There’s More Coming, and Stella Isn’t Hiding It “We also had upgrades to the MCL40 and I don’t wan to miss any opportunity to thank the team for the efforts in bringing these upgrades,” he said.
“There’s a little bit more that hopefully we will take to the coming races, especially there’s a couple of items that we will review for the future races. So like I say it’s very encouraging the trend. ” The Canadian package already covered substantial modifications to the floor, chassis, bodywork, front and rear wings, halo, and roll hoop – a sizeable haul even before factoring in that the headline front wing piece was effectively benched for further study.