Insisting he has faith in his team to sort its issues, Lando Norris admits that it has been a tough start to the season, while Andrea Stella praises his drivers' positivity.

We recently observed that - in the wake of criticism of the 2026 rules in Australia - Stefano Domenicali and Mohammed ben Sulayem were conspicuous by their absence.

One should also add Zak Brown to the list, for the American, usually keen to share his thoughts with the waiting world, was absent as his team suffered a double DNS at the second race of the season.

We're not in any way saying that Zak only appears when things are going well, but...

At least we knew he'd be in Miami, not only because it is one of the new jewels in the crown of F1, and a home race for the Los Angeles born Woking CEO, but because this year's event marked McLaren's 1,000th grand prix.

The first was back in 1966, when the Robin Herd designed M2B debuted at Monaco, albeit in white as part of the making of John Frankenheimer's legendary movie, Grand Prix.

Thirteen drivers' championship and ten constructors' titles later, the forthcoming race in Miami would have been the Woking team's one thousandth. Unfortunately, Sunday's double DNS means the celebrations will have to wait until Montreal, or, God forbid another double DNS, back where it all began... in Monaco.

Of course, it isn't where or when McLaren gets to celebrate the historic milestone that matters to Lando Norris, it is sorting out the reliability issues that have blighted the start of his team's season.

"It's still been a weekend where we've learned a lot," he insisted after watching Sunday's race as a spectator, as did his teammate, for the second successive weekend. "Already, since last weekend, we learned some things," he added.

"It's also a weekend where we clarified that we need to do a better job with understanding the power unit still, and make some changes," he continued. "And we also understand the car is not to the level that it needs to be to fight for the podium or a win at the time being.

"We know we have a lot of work ahead," he admitted, "disregarding the issues that we had. The team knows where we stand and they are very realistic about everything, so they're all working hard. They've been working hard all season, but especially now, they know what direction we need to work in, in order to get back to what we think we can achieve."

Daring to look at the long-term, Norris remains defiant, insisting that things can be turner around.

"Absolutely" he said. "Every year is different so it's never a guarantee but I have a lot of hope and faith in the team that we can turn things around from where we are.

"It's still a very long season," he continued. "After Japan we've got a good little break coming up, so that's probably a good thing for us to try and figure out things and gives us a little bit more time to develop some things to see if we can get it on the car earlier.

"So as much as it's not the start of the year we want, I have a lot of confidence in the team that we can still improve things and fight for podiums at some point and fight for wins maybe later in the season. I want to believe that. Tough start, but I have faith."

Other than keeping the Woking team's title hopes on track, team boss Andrea Stella has to somehow maintain morale, not easy after Shanghai, or even Melbourne where Norris, the team's only starter, finished 51s down on the race winner.

However, the Italian was quick to praise his two drivers for remaining positive and not adding to the doom and gloom that some within the team must surely be feeling.

"It is a tough moment, that's for sure," he said, "like if we consider that Oscar has not been able to start a race in this 2026 campaign, that's pretty difficult for Oscar to process.

"But at the same time, and this was testified and witnessed in the conversation with Lando and Oscar after the race, both remain quite positive.

"I think what we have gone through at McLaren in terms of the journey has been a good journey of developing a culture, a mindset, what we call, internally, a winner's mindset, just a positive attitude and which focuses us on what we can control. In this case, there wasn't much we could have controlled so we just take any possible learning, and we go again.

"And we say, like even looking at last year, when we won the double championship, we said, and I said that publicly but we definitely said internally, the victory was not in Abu Dhabi, the victory was in Qatar and in Vegas, for the way we withstood the difficulties. That's where you really become a champion.

"So today, this is part of the same part of the journey, which is the day in which you have to withstand the difficulty, you have to process it, and you have to use it to become even more of a worthwhile champion in the future and gain the qualities to be a champion.

"That's our mindset, and I've seen it completely in play today with Oscar, with Lando, and with the team."