Two victories and another win that slipped away because of an extremely unfortunate Virtual Safety Car tell the story of McLaren’s remarkable progress with the MCL40 over the past four races. Aerodynamic upgrades introduced around the summer break have delivered the expected gains, while simulation tools supplied by Mercedes have allowed the team to extract more from its power unit. With Ferrari now under increasing pressure, second place in the Constructors’ Championship has become a realistic target for the Woking team as it also prepares corrective measures for its 2027 project.
The improvement has not come from a single breakthrough. McLaren has made progress aerodynamically, improved the MCL40’s interaction with its tyres and learned how to exploit the Mercedes power unit more effectively. The result is a significantly more versatile package, with the team emerging as a leading force on several technically demanding circuits. The latest Formula 1 championship standings underline how much the competitive picture has changed during the second half of the season.
How McLaren’s MCL40 aerodynamic upgrades changed the picture
Budapest, Zandvoort and Madrid have offered a revealing snapshot of McLaren’s progress. The team established itself as the benchmark on three circuits that share some characteristics, particularly the importance of technical sections relative to long straights, but which also require very different approaches to extracting performance from the car.
The MCL40 has become a versatile and competitive Formula 1 car after making significant gains through development. McLaren adopted a very clear strategy at the beginning of the season, choosing not to introduce upgrades immediately after the car’s launch so that its engineers could first develop a deeper understanding of the aerodynamics of the new generation of cars. The first major developments arrived between the Miami and Canadian Grands Prix and produced an important step forward. However, not everything worked as expected. McLaren had to revise its new front wing and also identified areas where the fundamental concept of the car required further correction.
The reigning world champions therefore waited another two months before introducing their second major upgrade package, with new components spread across the Budapest, Zandvoort and Monza weekends. That development programme has helped turn the MCL40 into the car McLaren originally hoped it could become, with further updates already planned as Andrea Stella continues to push development through the closing part of the year. One of the most significant changes was the new floor introduced in Hungary and subsequently revised in Italy, with some of its geometry taking inspiration from Ferrari’s solution. At Zandvoort, McLaren also introduced a more elaborate version of the FTM element behind the exhaust, together with a high-downforce rear wing that was also used in Madrid.
With Ferrari developing at a slower rate and Mercedes having completely halted its development, McLaren has consequently become the leading force on the most technical circuits. The progress, however, has not been limited to aerodynamic performance. The team’s recent competitiveness has also been reflected in its planned development programme, with Andrea Stella confirming further McLaren upgrades for Baku.
McLaren improves the MCL40’s interaction with the tyres
The updates have increased the MCL40’s overall downforce, although the gains are not distributed equally across every type of corner. McLaren has improved particularly strongly in high-speed turns, which was the principal target of its second development package. The scale of that improvement has actually exceeded the team’s expectations.
Low-speed corners remain a weakness. The MCL40 is also still lacking some effectiveness under braking, where limited rear-end stability can make the car more difficult to manage. McLaren had already identified tyre behaviour as a crucial area of development before the Spanish Grand Prix.
Its interaction with the tyres has since become another important area of progress. Andrea Stella had openly identified this as a development objective as early as June. The Woking car has always been relatively gentle on its tyres, a characteristic that has been particularly valuable in the strong race pace seen from Hungary onwards. What stood out most, however, was Lando Norris’s pace during the opening stint in Madrid. Graining on the medium compound was a widespread problem during the Spanish Grand Prix, and McLaren cars have frequently been particularly sensitive to the phenomenon in recent years. At Madring, however, Lando Norris’s MCL40 was comfortably the fastest car on the circuit.
The scale of McLaren’s advantage and the effect of tyre degradation were also evident in the wider Spanish Grand Prix technical analysis. Ultimately, Norris’s opportunity to convert that pace into victory disappeared when the timing of the Virtual Safety Car transformed the race, a situation that later prompted Andrea Stella to call for a review of the VSC regulations.
McLaren extracts more performance from the Mercedes power unit
Another major area of development has involved the power unit. McLaren has made considerable progress in extracting performance from the Brixworth-built Mercedes engine, with an important acceleration in July when the team finally received the results of specialised work carried out for the MCL40 by Mercedes High Performance Powertrains.
These are simulation tools capable of predicting power unit behaviour while accounting for specific characteristics of the McLaren, including its aerodynamic map, drivability, gearbox ratios and numerous other parameters. The reigning champions have therefore gained the means to simulate power unit behaviour much more accurately.
This has allowed McLaren to define increasingly efficient energy-management strategies and make better use of electrical power throughout a lap. Gear ratios remain an important part of that equation. McLaren runs shorter gearing than Mercedes, something that has brought advantages in certain conditions but also contributes to the MCL40’s limitations on long straights. The effect was particularly visible when Lando Norris used McLaren’s shorter gearing to help beat Kimi Antonelli to pole in Madrid.
McLaren is now waiting for the updated power unit made possible through the ADUO process. Mercedes has already stated that it intends to introduce the update before the end of the year and will be required to make it available to its customer teams as well.
Reliability problems have also become increasingly rare, and the credit does not belong solely to the engineers at Brixworth, who have focused particularly on strengthening the battery. McLaren itself has improved the integration between the power unit and its chassis. Earlier in the season, problems in that area contributed to several retirements for which Mercedes was not responsible.
McLaren still has weaknesses to solve as Ferrari comes under pressure
Despite its substantial progress, the MCL40 remains far from flawless. Straight-line speed is currently one of McLaren’s biggest limitations, resulting partly from its shorter gearbox ratios compared with Mercedes and partly from lower aerodynamic efficiency.
The latter also increases fuel consumption and has a negative impact on energy management. McLaren has worked on several measures to mitigate the problem, including the low-downforce package used at Monza and a movable-wing solution capable of changing configuration, which was temporarily shelved in Madrid.
These remain partial solutions to a more structural problem. For next year, McLaren has already decided that it wants to increase the wheelbase of the car. That will allow the team to enlarge the floor area and generate more downforce through the floor, which is more aerodynamically efficient than producing the same load through the wings.
That does not mean McLaren intends to abandon development of the MCL40 before the end of 2026. Andrea Stella made the team’s approach clear: “We want to keep bringing new parts to the car. Our effort is fully focused on the 2026 season. We have not compromised this year for 2027. We want to do well this season.”
With the MCL40 now faster, more versatile and increasingly effective at extracting performance from both its tyres and Mercedes power unit, McLaren has given Ferrari a clear warning. Second place in the Constructors’ Championship is no longer beyond reach.
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