Four rounds of 2026, and until Saturday lunchtime every pole, every win and every sprint had belonged to Mercedes. Then Lando Norris put his McLaren on sprint pole, converted the run to Turn 1, and led all nineteen laps. Oscar Piastri made it a 1-2. The reigning champion’s first victory of any kind in 2026, McLaren’s first of the season - and the first crack in the Mercedes wall.
The sprint
The win itself was straightforward - Norris cleared off at the start and was never headed, with Piastri riding shotgun and keeping Charles Leclerc at arm’s length for the 1-2. The upgrade package McLaren pulled forward from Imola - seven items, the biggest any team has brought this year - looked worth every hour of the rush job. On a hot, low-grip afternoon, nobody else had an answer.
The mess was all behind them. Andrea Kimi Antonelli launched poorly from second, fell behind Piastri and Leclerc, and then drove like a man having exactly the Saturday he was having: four track-limits violations, a black-and-white flag, and finally a five-second penalty that dropped him from fourth on the road to sixth. Along the way Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton staged the sprint’s best fight - Verstappen completed a pass off the track at Turn 11, was told to hand it back, did, and then re-passed cleanly a lap later to take fifth.
Audi’s day from hell
Neither Audi saw the finish - or, in one case, the start. Nico Hülkenberg ’s engine let go in smoke and flame on the way to the grid, his slot left empty. Gabriel Bortoleto finished eleventh on the road and was then disqualified: the engine’s intake air pressure had crept past the 4.8-bar maximum during one hot lap, and a technical breach is a technical breach, however small. Add Arvid Lindblad ‘s non-start - relegated to the pit lane because his RB was left uncovered overnight, then withdrawn with a technical issue before he could even take that up - and a third of the midfield never raced at all.
Before the start the grid stood for a minute’s silence for Alex Zanardi, whose death had been announced the previous day.
The championship
Eight points for Norris, none of the big ones for the leader: Andrea Kimi Antonelli ‘s cushion over George Russell is down to seven points, the closest the top of the table has been since Melbourne. Oliver Bearman ’s 17 still have him ahead of a Verstappen whose car remains the story Red Bull don’t want to talk about.
The Miami Grand Prix runs on Sunday, and the question it has to answer is simple: was this McLaren’s weekend, or McLaren’s turning point?