McLaren planning upgrades to make dominant 2025 F1 car more versatile

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has revealed that further upgrades to the MCL39 are in the pipeline despite its dominant start to the 2025 Formula 1 season.

McLaren put on its most impressive showing in recent years in the Miami Grand Prix earlier this month, with Oscar Piastri leading a 1-2 for the squad and finishing 37 seconds ahead of its closest rival, Mercedes’ George Russell.

The extent of McLaren’s advantage at Miami Autodrome has been put down to circuit characteristics and its superior ability to manage tyres in hot conditions by those within the team.

Stella believes McLaren will not enjoy such a big buffer over the competition at every track, citing its defeat to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in Japan as proof that it can be beaten this year.

However, the British squad is now working on plans to make the MCL39 more versatile, with new parts set to be introduced at an unspecified stage in the season with the aim of making the car quick in a wide variety of conditions.

That is despite the looming regulation overhaul in 2026, which is forcing several F1 teams to divert focus away from this year’s car.

“Talking about Miami, we are understanding the strengths of the MCL39, which overall is a competitive car, but in some conditions it seems to have a certain advantage over the rest of the field,” said Stella.

“These conditions materialised very well in Miami with the track layout, the speed range, the ambient temperatures.

“But we know very well that in some other kinds of circuits like Saudi or Japan, it's a different story. Everything gets quite a lot tighter.

“Hopefully we will be able to retain this characteristic and this advantage over the course of the season. But this will require the car to be developed, to be upgraded, because we see that no one is waiting, no one is standing still.

“We see upgrades being brought trackside by our competitors. We do plan to upgrade the MCL39 and try and, if anything, possibly make the car even more suitable for a wider range of conditions and cornering speed."

Prior to joining McLaren in 2015 and rising through the ranks to become its team principal, Stella enjoyed a lengthy stint with its long-time rival Ferrari.

Initially working as a performance engineer, he oversaw Michael Schumacher’s impressive title-winning campaign in 2004 during which he completely annihilated the competition in the first two-quarters of the season.

Stella said he uses the statistics from 2004 as a motivation tool at McLaren, but doesn’t think it would be possible for Piastri and Lando Norris to replicate the dominance of Schumacher this year.

“We need to go back to 2004,” he said. “That car won 12 of the first 13 races with Michael, and the only one we lost was because Michael crashed with [Juan Pablo] Montoya under the tunnel in Monaco, while Montoya was actually one lap down during a safety car. Otherwise, likely we would have won 13 out of 13.

“That’s a reference that I actually often use even to motivate myself – like, that’s where we want to be. But I don’t think this will happen this year.

"So, there is hard work ahead of us to make sure this happens in the years to come. We are a few steps behind compared to those kinds of references.”