Two things to consider: 1) They plan on working out orbital refuelling before sending a Starship to Mars, this might not be enough to return it to orbit from M

Two things to consider: 1) They plan on working out orbital refuelling before sending a Starship to Mars, this might not be enough to return it to orbit from Mars surface depending on how much fuel needs to be used for Earth orbit departure but I wonder if it would be enough to decelerate into Mars orbit and have enough left over to return to Earth, this could open up some other possibilities which leads to #2 2) If they wanted to do a sample return mission, they might not need to land the whole Starship on Mars. If they put the Starship in orbit they could use it as a command module and send a Mars Lander down that was kitted out with enough fuel to return a sample to orbit. They should have about 330,000 lbs of payload to play with.