Struggling at the start of the season, McLaren took advantage of an unexpected break in the calendar to thoroughly review the development of its car.
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McLaren finally seems to have found the right direction. After a difficult start to the 2026 season, the reigning world constructors’ champion gradually regained competitiveness, culminating in its first win of the year with Lando Norris in Hungary.
For Andrea Stella, this turnaround cannot be attributed to a particular development or a sudden breakthrough during a Grand Prix. The McLaren director believes that the long break in the calendar in April played a decisive role.
With the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia Grands Prix postponed due to the security situation in the Middle East, five weeks separated the events in Japan and Miami. An unexpected pause from which McLaren ultimately benefited.
A forced break that turned out to be beneficial
At that point in the season, the British team was far from meeting expectations. Reliability issues had multiplied while the MCL40 lacked performance against Mercedes, forcing the Woking engineers to quickly seek solutions.
“There was no specific event that changed our trajectory, but rather a gradual awareness of the scale of the challenge we faced and the adjustments we needed to make,” explains Stella.
The long break in April then offered McLaren a rare opportunity mid-season: several weeks to deeply analyze the weaknesses of its car.
“Paradoxically, this forced interruption in April probably allowed us to fully focus on analyzing the MCL40’s performance and to fully understand that we needed to redirect or strengthen its development in certain areas of the car.”
This reflection gradually led McLaren to revise some of its technical priorities, with results becoming visible before the summer break.
The power unit remains a complex problem
McLaren’s difficulties were not limited to the chassis. The integration of the new power unit supplied by Mercedes also posed a major challenge since the start of the new regulatory era.
Both cars notably failed to start in China due to electrical problems. Other reliability issues then disrupted the weekends of Norris and Oscar Piastri.
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The situation was all the more frustrating as McLaren was running behind the official Mercedes team while both structures use the same power unit. However, Stella has always refused to attribute all of his team’s difficulties to its engine supplier.
“Over the past few months, we have also had the opportunity to deepen our understanding of the new power unit supplied by Mercedes and to work with our technical partners to determine how to best exploit it,” continues the Italian.
Progress is real, but the McLaren director warns that the work is far from finished.
“It has been a long process, with ups and downs, but it is starting to bear fruit. That said, I expect that optimizing the power unit will remain a complex issue throughout the 2026 season.”
Hungary validates the new direction
The Hungarian Grand Prix was the best illustration of the progress made by McLaren. For the last race before the summer break, the team introduced a significant set of aerodynamic upgrades aimed at correcting several weaknesses identified during the first half of the season.
The floor was notably revised, as were several aerodynamic elements, with the goal of improving the MCL40’s behavior under braking and in corners.
The results were immediate. Norris took pole position before claiming his first win of the season, while Piastri was also able to fight at the front before his retirement.
“It is clear that the Budapest weekend, which closed the first half of the season, was the highlight,” emphasizes Stella. “Not only because of the result, but especially because the aerodynamic package introduced at the Hungaroring is the result of this change in direction in our development.”
“It allowed us to make significant progress in terms of competitiveness.”
The Hungarian victory thus appears less as an isolated success than as the first concrete validation of the work undertaken several months earlier. It now remains to be seen whether McLaren can confirm this progress after the break and sustainably return to the fight with Mercedes and Ferrari.
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