Two races into the 2026 season and the defending World Constructors’ Champions have zero race starts from four possible entries. Neither Lando Norris nor Oscar Piastri turned a wheel in anger at the Chinese Grand Prix on Sunday. Both cars sat stranded in the Shanghai paddock with separate mechanical failures while 18 rivals circulated without them.
Piastri’s car was physically removed from the grid moments before the formation lap. Norris never even made it out of the garage.
McLaren confirmed electronic problems on the Norris car roughly an hour before race start. Mechanics pulled the floor and checked multiple components. The team publicly expressed confidence the fix would hold, but it didn’t.
“Unfortunately we identified separate issues on both cars which prevented them from starting the Chinese GP,” McLaren posted on X. We will now work to identify each issue.” The statement’s vagueness tells its own story — a team scrambling to understand what’s gone wrong with machinery that carried them to the constructors’ title just months ago.
The numbers are staggering. Piastri has now recorded a DNS in both races this season, having crashed on the reconnaissance lap at his home race in Melbourne the week prior. He is believed to be one of the few drivers in F1 history to post consecutive DNS results.
The last driver to do so? Bruce McLaren himself, at the 1969 United States and Mexico Grands Prix.
This is also the first time in the team’s entire history — stretching back to 1966 — that McLaren has failed to start a grand prix with both entered cars due to reliability. They had both cars fail to qualify for the 1983 Monaco Grand Prix when Niki Lauda and John Watson were driving, but that was a speed problem, not a breakdown problem. This is a team that can’t keep its cars alive long enough to see green.
McLaren weren’t alone in their misery. Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto was pushed off the grid before the start, and Williams driver Alex Albon was sidelined with a hydraulics failure. Four cars out of twenty never took the start — an absurd attrition rate before a single racing lap.
The common thread between McLaren, Williams, and potentially Audi’s troubles deserves scrutiny. McLaren and Williams both run Mercedes power units under the new 2026 regulations.
While McLaren’s garage sat silent, Mercedes had a day to remember. Kimi Antonelli, who had already become the youngest pole-sitter in F1 history on Saturday, led a Mercedes one-two over teammate George Russell. Lewis Hamilton started third and delivered Ferrari’s first podium of the season, finishing ahead of Charles Leclerc.
Max Verstappen gave Red Bull a brief scare when mechanics were spotted working on his rear wing on the grid. The four-time champion avoided the fate that befell four of his competitors.
The championship picture after two rounds is already distorted. Norris, the defending drivers’ champion, has one DNS and whatever salvage he managed in Melbourne. Piastri has nothing — two weekends, two DNS results, zero laps raced.
McLaren is hemorrhaging points it cannot recover while Mercedes and Ferrari rack up finishes uncontested at the front. The team’s statement promised to “identify each issue.” They’d better do it fast.
Two races of catastrophic unreliability don’t make a pattern — but they make a crisis. The constructors’ title McLaren fought so hard to win last season is already slipping through fingers that can’t even get their cars to the starting line.
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