McLaren appear to be cursed - what should they do about that?

McLaren

McLaren appear to be cursed - what should they do about that?

Papaya rules? Nope: right now, papaya sucks.

Chris Deeley

Tuesday 26 May 2026 11:57

McLaren are a competent racing organisation, right?

All of the evidence of the last few years would suggest that they are. They’re the reigning two-time F1 constructors’ champions, one of their drivers won the title last year, and they’ve shown pretty good pace when it matters this year.

They’re run by Andrea Stella, a respected veteran of the sport, and CEO Zak Brown has helped set teams up for success in multiple racing series.

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Let’s say that McLaren are competent, then. If that’s the case, how come between their two cars, they’ve had five out of ten races ruined before the start so far this year?

The logical explanation? It must be a curse.

Track back through it. Australia, Oscar Piastri has the most freak of freak accidents on his way to the grid. He doesn’t start. China, separate electrical issues related to the power unit hit each car late on raceday. Piastri has to get rolled off the grid and into the garage. Neither of them start.

An unfortunately-timed safety car robbed Piastri of a chance to win in Japan and, now, both his and Lando Norris’ races were ruined before lights out after the team banked on some rain that never arrived the way they needed it to. Both had pitted by the end of the third lap to shed their pointless intermediate tyres, before Piastri broke his front wing on Alex Albon’s sidepod and Norris’ gearbox started making noises like ‘crrrrCHNK’ and ‘boing!’.

At some point we’re going to have a conversation about that ‘moustache’ and ‘beard’ combination, young man.

So...curse.

So why are McLaren cursed?

Thank you for asking that helpful question, hypothetical reader. We’ve taken some soundings, and come up with some possible answers.

Karmic realignment from the absolutely interminable ‘Papaya Rules’ saga from the last 18 months.

Zak Brown has had an Etsy witch on retainer to curse Red Bull for some time (see: Horner, Newey, Marko, Wheatley, etc. all leaving), but he thinks the job’s done and now the payments have started to bounce. Never rip off an Etsy witch. Or anyone, really, because that’s not nice.

Someone swapped Andrea Stella with System Of A Down frontman Serj Tankian over the winter and nobody noticed.

It’s harder for a team to lock into a new regulation setup when they’re a customer team, buying their power units from another manufacturer.

That disconnect in development is a pretty clear gap between Mercedes, who made the engines, and McLaren, who just buy them. They’ve worked with them more, they’ve built around them better. That’s one of the major benefits of the manufacturer model, obviously.

Danhausen did it.

All equally plausible. Could even be more than one of those.

But of course, knowing the reason that things are going wrong is only half the battle. The other half is knowing what do to about it. As such...

So how can McLaren become uncursed?

This is the real question. Some of these may work, some of these may not. Zak Brown, if you want to know which the surefire options are, please comment on this post and I will send you my PayPal details.

The usual curse-breaking stuff, of course! Burning sage in the garage or, if they want to follow the example of Barry Fry when he managed Birmingham City, urinate in all four corners. Not sure if that’d be ‘corners of the track’ or ‘corners of the garage’ in F1, experimentation may be necessary.

Have Zak Brown apologise for being in Indianapolis for the Indy 500 instead of at the Canadian Grand Prix. Yes, ‘there are McLaren teams in both’, but this is an F1-focused publication.

Tell. Me. Lando. Norris’. Haircare. Regimen.

The curls shouldn’t look that good after two hours sweating in a race helmet! Just tell me what product he uses! All I ask!

Please.

Continue developing what looks like a very fast car and trust that they’ll find all of these early gremlins as they get used to the new package.

Seriously, it’s a 113-point gap to Mercedes with a minimum of 17 races left this season. Did you know that when there were 17 races left in 2024, the gap to Red Bull at the top was 116 points? And McLaren didn’t just overturn that gap, they created a 77-point lead of their own over Red Bull by the end of the season? And that was without running with clown shoes on for two and a half months.

Ask Danhausen nicely. Or pay him 20 human dollars.

Are we all clear? Good? Excellent.

To conclude, then. McLaren are probably cursed, for a reason that we’re not entirely sure of, and there are some potential cures, except we don’t know if any of them work.

We’ll be back with more F1 analysis for you next week.

F1 McLaren Lando Norris Oscar Piastri Zak Brown Andrea Stella