McLaren is also a customer team of Mercedes this season, but has not yet been able to achieve the same results as the Silver Arrows. While Mercedes has already seen its own driver win three times, the papaya team has only managed a trip to the podium for Oscar Piastri during the Japanese GP so far. According to former Formula 1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya, McLaren, as a customer team, simply needs more time to discover the ‘tricks’ of the Mercedes power unit.
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McLaren has been a customer team of Mercedes again since 2021, and that has not been without success for the British team. In 2024, the papayas became constructors’ champions for the first time since 1998, while a year later they also secured the drivers’ title for Lando Norris. However, McLaren must watch Mercedes take the lead in the opening phase of 2026, and after the Japanese GP, they face a gap of 89 World Championship points. According to former F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya, it is not so strange that customer team McLaren has such a deficit to Mercedes at the start of a new regulatory cycle.
‘Mona Lisa with crayons’
“There are systems that Mercedes has developed and that you, as a customer, have to figure out how to download and install yourself,” Montoya explains to AS Colombia. “They deliver them to you as if to say: ‘Let’s have a lesson in inspection. I know how to paint the Mona Lisa, but I’ll give you crayons’. There is simply a lag for a customer behind the engine supplier at the beginning. They give you the same hardware, but they don’t tell you exactly how to use everything.”
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According to Montoya, McLaren has to find the ‘tricks’ to the Mercedes engine themselves, although according to the former F1 driver, there is an easy way to do so. “To a certain extent, those tricks are easy to figure out,” says Montoya. “Because you can download the telemetry and see so much of what the other teams are doing. From speeds to GPS.”
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