Stella admits McLaren are back to pre-Baku form after chaotic Singapore sprint shootout

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has declared his team are back to their pre-Baku competitive level after a chaotic sprint qualifying session at the Marina Bay Street Circuit placed four different constructors in the top four positions. Max Verstappen took sprint pole for Red Bull, with George Russell second for Mercedes, Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari, and Oscar Piastri fourth for McLaren.

For Stella, the diversity of the front rows was the most significant takeaway from a session that had been anything but straightforward. “It was an interesting qualifying session, full of drama, which confirmed just how closely matched the frontrunners are,” he told media after the session. “It’s no coincidence that there are four different cars in the top four positions.”

McLaren had endured a difficult stretch through Azerbaijan and Malaysia, where unpredictable vehicle dynamics and narrow set-up windows left the team struggling to match their earlier-season pace. Stella was direct in linking Singapore’s result to a return of that earlier form. “We’re back in a situation similar to that seen before Baku, when the differences in grid positions were relatively small,” he said. “All things considered, it’s a good starting point for the rest of the weekend, and we hope to be in contention for podiums.”

Lando Norris, who will start fifth, missed out on the second row by just 0.055 seconds behind Leclerc’s time — a margin that underlines how compressed the field has become under the Singapore floodlights.

The session itself was not without its complications for McLaren. A congested SQ1 threatened to compromise both cars’ initial laps, and the team’s strategy in the final SQ3 segment raised eyebrows. Rather than banking on a single flying lap on the mandatory soft tyres, the McLaren pitwall sent both Piastri and Norris out for multiple attempts, looking to extract the maximum benefit from the transition between medium and soft compounds on a track where even the softer tyres were showing limited degradation.

The gamble produced a mixed but ultimately acceptable outcome — Piastri secured a front-row-adjacent starting slot while Norris remained firmly in the hunt. With the championship battle still live heading into the Singapore weekend, Stella’s measured optimism reflects a team that believes the worst of their mid-season turbulence may now be behind them.