McLaren sets out timeline to catch Mercedes after F1 upgrade ‘redirection’

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has confirmed a change of direction for his side’s approach to upgrades during the 2026 Formula 1 season. 

McLaren’s difficult start to its double title defence continued at the British Grand Prix, with reigning world champion Lando Norris finishing fourth, and Oscar Piastri ending up out of the points after first lap contact. 

Despite a solid points haul from the weekend, which also featured a sprint race, McLaren was well off the pace of frontrunners Mercedes and Ferrari, with Stella putting the gap to its main F1 rivals at around “half a second” and describing P4 in the grand prix as an “overachievement”. 

Stella revealed that McLaren has changed its focus regarding some concepts it originally pursued for its 2026 F1 challenger and has been “redirecting” its development approach for the MCL40. 

“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 told media including Crash.net. 

“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.

“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 believes McLaren’s best chance of turning around its challenging 2026 campaign will come following an upgrade push either side of the summer shutdown next month. 

“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,” Stella explained. “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.”