As championship defences go, McLaren's 2026 so far has been little short of catastrophic: Oscar Piastri has yet to start a grand prix, while Lando Norris didn't even get as far as the grid in China.

Statistically Shanghai was the first time neither McLaren has started a grand prix since the 2005 US GP at Indianapolis, where it joined the other Michelin-supplied teams in withdrawing after the formation lap. Before then you have to go all the way back to 1966, when it was struggling to source competitive engines for its maiden F1 season, to see McLaren scratch two cars before a race start for reliability reasons – and even then it had ruled out the second car before the weekend even began.

In 1966 Bruce McLaren turned unsuccessfully to the small Italian manufacturer Serenissima's 3-litre V12 when his project to downsize Ford's Indy 500-winning V8 failed to deliver power and reliability. The Serenissima turned out to be short on these, too, despite the local priest in the town of Sasso Marconi blessing each block in turn as it was loaded into the McLaren truck.

In 2026, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella is placing his faith in Mercedes-Benz High Performance Powertrains (HPP) rather than the divine.

"China was definitely a challenging and frustrating event for us," said Stella ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix. "Two cars not being able to take part in a grand prix is pretty exceptional as a situation. We understand the source of the problem.

"In both cases it was related to the electrical side of the power unit. We had faults on the battery, but different faults, pretty much at the same time of the weekend, and in this sense it's quite exceptional. We have worked together with HPP to investigate the problem. We trust 100% that HPP have put in place remedials."

Norris's car didn't make it out of the garage for the Chinese GP

While the battery faults differed in their specific nature, the one from Piastri's car was salvageable while the one in Norris's suffered permanent damage. It's understood that a software problem, which McLaren initially tried to resolve in the garage by swapping the ECU, put Norris's battery beyond repair, while Piastri's issue was with an auxiliary component attached to the battery.

"HPP have very high standards," continued Stella. "When they have information to process from a fault, for sure they will execute and put in place all the necessary learnings, adaptations and actions to avoid a repeat. So, we are definitely looking forward here to having, I would say, a regular weekend, like we haven't had the chance in China and, to some extent, not even in Australia with Oscar spinning in the laps to the grid.

"We look forward as a team and, above all, we look forward for Oscar, who has not been able to have a lap in a race this season. We want to break this trend and be there."

If all else fails, he can always phone a priest…

McLaren: We’re still behind Mercedes and Ferrari despite topping FP2 in Japan

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