When McLaren should see first results of redirected upgrade approach

The British Grand Prix weekend was by no means a disaster for McLaren, but it was far from optimum for the team that scored a memorable 1-2 with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri a year ago.

In Saturday's Sprint Norris managed to take the final spot on the podium, and then in Sunday’s Grand Prix he finished fourth. Piastri meanwhile was seventh in the Sprint, and a frustrated P11 in the Grand Prix after first lap contact.

It was a decent haul of points in the circumstances. However, Team Principal Andrea Stella was under no illusions. It took problems for drivers ahead to promote Norris up the order from the seventh place he held after the start, and there was no hiding from the fact that the MCL40 – running in a special white and green stripe livery – was far from the pace of Ferrari and Mercedes.

“Overall the race confirmed that our performance today was in line with Qualifying,” Stella noted after the race. “So we still exhibit a decent gap to Ferrari and Mercedes – probably around half a second.”

He added: “P4, I think it's an overachievement, not on our own merit. It's more because other people had trouble.”

The bottom line is that the team that have been so successful at bringing upgrades to the track over the past couple of years have been left behind in the development race by its main rivals – and the first step in the recovery plan will be made at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Stella also conceded that part of the reason for McLaren’s current struggles is that last year the team lost some momentum on the 2026 project because it was embroiled in the title fight, with Norris coming out on top against his team mate and a late surge from Max Verstappen.

“Definitely,” he said after Sunday’s race. “I would say that having been in the championship so tight with Red Bull, and Verstappen in particular in the drivers’, we needed some of our attention in terms of keeping working on the car.

“Even if we didn't bring big upgrades, definitely we needed to keep paying attention from a technical point of view to the MCL39. We needed to ensure that we maximised our performance race-by-race, because the challenge from Verstappen was becoming more and more material.”

Crucially the team is now also changing its focus in terms of some key concepts it initially pursued for the 2026 car. That’s something that doesn’t happen overnight.

“During the development I think we adopted some directions from a conceptual point of view, that as we learn more about the 2026 regulations, I would say that we are redirecting," Stella continued.

“And this, like everything, especially from an aerodynamic point of view, is not something that you can get to converge in the space of a week. It normally takes one or two months, and I think this couple of months is the delay that we have at the moment.

“And we see that it is probably two, three months the space between which we see upgrades from the top teams.

“So I think that's what we believe – we have now a clear direction in terms of development. But it takes in some areas of the car – or it took – a couple of months to get it to be realised.

“So we should see in Hungary the first results of this approach, and then hopefully more and more upgrades for the rest of the season.”

Stella is confident that the team’s competitive situation will improve from the Hungaroring onwards, with more to come in the races immediately after the summer break.

“My ideal trajectory at the moment is that we would like to close the gap with the next round of upgrades that will happen across the shutdown,” he noted. “With something happening before and something happening after the shutdown.

“I think because we have kind of cleared our ideas as to which are the directions to follow in terms of aerodynamic development, we see now that the development is more sustained than what we had in some phases last year, while defining the launch specification.

“But in my trajectory, I think we are going to close the gap with another step of upgrades, so ideally we will be able to deliver upgrades in the short-term and upgrades in the mid-term – and hopefully by then the others have not disappeared too far in front in the championship.”