After Sunday’s GP of Miami on the 3rd, the “pecking order” in the 2026 F1 season didn’t just stay put. It shifted, and it shifted in a way that makes you look twice at what you thought you knew. For the full build-up, check the JogoHoje home, because the story isn’t only about who won, but about what the teams are learning in real time.
In the wake of a weekend where McLaren delivered a sprint double with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and where Mercedes still found a way to win with Andrea Kimi Antonelli, McLaren chief Andrea Stella didn’t exactly throw cold water. He just added the missing technical footnote: Mercedes may still be quicker, but Miami might not have revealed their ceiling.
What Andrea Stella said and why it matters
Stella’s read was blunt in the way only a technical boss can be. He accepted that Miami brought a new competitive equilibrium to the table, driven by the sheer volume of work teams brought to South Florida.
His key point was that, yes, Mercedes still carries a vantagem em décimos over the field. But the shape of that advantage looked different across the weekend, and that tells you a lot about setup sensitivity, adaptation, and what each team squeezed out of their pacote de upgrades.
He also flagged that execution and optimisation were suddenly decisive at a level that can’t be waved away with “the fastest car wins.” In a tight season, it’s the fine margins that decide who’s actually on top at the right moment.
Did Miami change the picture of the 2026 F1 fight?
Miami wasn’t a normal weekend. The opening act of the season had been messy for several outfits, and Stella’s own backdrop was dominated by reliability pain earlier in the year. That context matters, because when you arrive with a robust bundle of atualizações aerodinâmicas, you’re not just chasing lap time. You’re also trying to verify whether the new direction holds up under pressure.
Stella basically argued that the field collectively moved closer. And he didn’t mention it as a wish. He named it: McLaren, Ferrari, and Red Bull trimmed the gap. That’s the kind of sentence you say when you’ve watched the deltas stack up lap after lap.
So the question becomes: if the gap shrank, why did Mercedes still look like Mercedes?
Because winning is one thing. Showing your full potential is another. Miami, in Stella’s view, might have been the former more than the latter.
Where McLaren gained ground with the updates
Let’s talk about the MCL40 and what McLaren actually did with its pacote de upgrades. After the reliability headaches of the early races, McLaren landed in Miami with a serious upgrade direction, and you could see the payoff quickly.
They didn’t just “run fast.” They executed the weekend flow. In the sprint, Norris and Piastri turned the improvements into a real statement, not a one-off blip. And then, in the main race, McLaren returned to the podium with both cars, which is a far more convincing signal than a single qualifying lap.
From a tactical standpoint, sprint success is often a stress test for tyre management and aero consistency. It forces teams to get the car working inside a narrow janela de pneus and to keep the balance stable when the track evolution is still playing tricks.
McLaren’s upgrades looked like they improved not only top speed or peak downforce, but the car’s ability to otimização de performance across different phases of the weekend. That’s why the progress felt real.
Why Mercedes might have gone further than it showed
Here’s where Stella turns slightly provocative, but in a controlled, engineering way. He said Mercedes still has an advantage of “a few tenths.” That’s a big claim in a season where tenths are basically oxygen.
He also suggested that Mercedes’ sprint phase didn’t show the full picture. In his words, something looked off: Mercedes didn’t appear to optimise properly in the first sprint phase, while the others seemed to have improved more than expected.
Stella then made the point that in a single-lap world, ritmo de classificação can swing wildly based on how well a team nails the adaptation and the setup window for the moment the tyres come in.
And that’s where the mind games start for the rest of the grid. If Mercedes can be slower than their own true pace in sprint trim, what happens when everything aligns in qualifying and the race build?
Stella’s suspicion is that the Mercedes car was capable of more, but Miami didn’t let them fully cash it in.
The weight of execution: qualifying, sprint and race
Stella’s tactical thesis is simple: when the upgrade arms race tightens, execução de fim de semana becomes the difference between “we’re fast” and “we’re consistently in control.”
He highlighted a contrast that’s hard to ignore. McLaren could shine in sprint qualifying, yet in the main qualifying session the same car started further back. That suggests a mismatch between the car’s best form and the session’s conditions, or a less-than-perfect adaptation to the track and tyre behaviour.
Now flip it onto Mercedes. If they were indeed not fully optimised during sprint, that means the operational chain wasn’t perfect: tyre prep, setup choice, and the way the team calibrated the car to the day’s temperature and grip.
That’s why “car advantage” and “weekend advantage” aren’t the same thing. A team can have the fastest package on paper and still lose the lap-time lottery if the performance optimisation isn’t executed at the exact right time.
What Norris hinted about strategy in Miami
Stella wasn’t the only one pointing to execution seams. Norris himself lamented a strategy error in Miami. And that’s a familiar theme: when the field is close, strategy becomes less about bold calls and more about not giving away easy probability.
In a race where upgrades alter the power window and tyre drop-off, the strategy isn’t just “when to pit.” It’s how you align stints with track activity, safety car risk, and the way rivals manage their pace layers.
So if Norris feels they lost the chance to win “again” due to optimisation and execution, it reinforces Stella’s core message: the margin wasn’t just speed. It was process.
Questions that remain heading into the GP of Canada
With the next stop being the GP of Canada from 22 to 24 May, the tactical radar turns to two targets: whether Mercedes corrects the sprint-phase optimisation gap, and whether McLaren’s upgrades translate into stronger top-end ritmo de classificação in the main qualifying session.
Because if Miami was a partial reveal, Canada could be the real audition. A different layout, different traction demands, and different tyre behaviour usually expose whether the improvement is robust or merely condition-dependent.
And that’s the real question for the top teams: can you turn “advantage in tenths” into “advantage on the scoreboard” when the track doesn’t give you the same windows?
O Veredito Jogo Hoje
Miami left us with a classic F1 paradox: Mercedes looks ahead, but Stella’s comments suggest they may have taken their foot off the gas in the sprint phase by a hair too much. In a season where everyone brought pacote de upgrades and the field is closing by the lap, that “few tenths” only matters if you execução de fim de semana it perfectly. Canada will tell us whether Miami was a genuine Mercedes peak, or just a weekend where the Silver Arrows didn’t show the full card.
Signed: JogoHoje’s Senior Tactical Analyst, watching the tenths like they owe us money.
Perguntas Frequentes
Is Mercedes still the strongest team in F1 in 2026?
Stella’s read is that Mercedes still carries an advantage in tenths. But the way he frames Miami suggests that the margin may not always be fully expressed, especially if execution during key sessions isn’t at maximum.
What changed for McLaren after the Miami updates?
McLaren’s atualizações aerodinâmicas helped them convert improved performance into results across both sprint and race. They delivered a sprint double with Norris and Piastri and then returned to the podium in the main race, which points to real gains rather than a one-session mirage.
Why does Andrea Stella think Mercedes didn’t show all its potential?
Because he believes Mercedes didn’t optimise properly during the first sprint phase, and that affected how the team’s true pace appeared. In his view, the others seemed to gain more than expected, but the likely culprit was Mercedes’ own otimização de performance and adaptation to the available setup and tyres.
