McLaren went to Monaco as the team to beat at a circuit where Lando Norris won 12 months ago. They left it with barely anything to show: Norris retired, Oscar Piastri came home a quiet fourth, and the paddock spent the evening asking how a championship-calibre car ended up so far from the action.
Norris was halted by one more of the mysterious failures that keep striking the 2026 grid.
"Once again in this new era of regulations, there are just random DNFs that crop up — Max Verstappen having a DNF, Lando Norris having a DNF, again McLaren," the trackside P1 with Matt and Tommy podcast observed.
Before his retirement, the hosts said, Norris had clear pace but no way through. "Lando Norris was stuck behind Pierre Gasly today. He was so much quicker. He was basically pushing him round the circuit," one noted, on an afternoon almost devoid of overtaking.
Piastri's fourth place drew the harshest words. Peter Windsor labelled it "a desultry, disappointing P4 for McLaren" and admitted he could not fathom how the Australian was so comfortably beaten.
"This is a McLaren with all these upgrades they've been doing, and Oscar Piastri getting blown away like that — it was unbelievable, really," Windsor said, noting that both George Russell and a hobbled Isack Hadjar were pulling clear of the McLaren.
Windsor also took aim at the team's caution. Starting from the fourth row, he felt McLaren should have rolled the dice on tyre strategy rather than mirroring the field. "Maybe they were scared into being boring after making that choice to start on intermediates in Canada," he said, recalling the previous weekend's wet-tyre misstep.
Norris's head-space came under the microscope too, with Windsor pointing to the driver griping on the radio about Russell's grid position just as he should have been nailing his own getaway — a sign, he felt, of a Norris "a little bit less targeted than he was a year or so ago."
Formula Duck was gentler, poking fun at Norris for retiring without parking to bring out the yellows, but the verdict was the same: McLaren were simply missing from a battle that Mercedes and Ferrari ran all weekend. With Antonelli now five wins clear and the title lead ballooning, McLaren head to Barcelona needing answers fast.
