McLaren intends to change one of the fundamental concepts behind the MCL40 for the 2027 Formula 1 season, moving away from the relatively short wheelbase chosen for its 2026 car. Technical director Neil Houldey has explained that the original decision was largely driven by the need to control weight under the new regulations, but McLaren now believes a longer car can unlock greater aerodynamic potential through the floor.
The change follows a first half of the 2026 season that proved more difficult than expected for the reigning world champions. McLaren has had to extract every possible hundredth of a second from the new technical and aerodynamic regulations while refining several bold design choices and devoting considerable attention to mass distribution.
Why McLaren chose a short wheelbase for the MCL40
The opening races of the 2026 championship, up to the Hungarian Grand Prix, became an unexpectedly demanding test for McLaren. Some of the difficulties encountered by the Woking team were linked to design concepts that did not initially produce all the theoretical benefits expected during development.
One of those choices was the slightly shorter wheelbase adopted for the MCL40. Speaking to Motorsport.com, Neil Houldey explained that the starting priority was to minimise weight as much as possible ahead of Formula 1’s new regulatory era.
“The idea of designing a shorter car came from the need to keep the overall mass down, knowing that the weight target imposed by the regulations would represent an enormous challenge for everyone,” Neil Houldey explained. “This approach gave us a significant initial advantage, allowing us to reinvest that weight ‘credit’ in other areas of performance.”
That strategy remained part of McLaren’s approach during the early stages of MCL40 development. Weight saved in the basic architecture of the car could later be used elsewhere as engineers introduced components designed to generate additional lap time.
“In the endless work of refinement to extract hundredths of a second, you inevitably end up adding weight here and there,” Neil Houldey said. “Having saved mass at the embryonic stage allowed us to spend that margin to generate performance. And over the course of development we managed to remove further weight.”
McLaren MCL40 development exposes the aerodynamic trade-off
While the shorter wheelbase helped McLaren create useful freedom in terms of weight management, the concept also reduced the amount of floor area available to aerodynamicists. As the team’s understanding of the 2026 rules has matured, that trade-off has become increasingly important.
McLaren has already made substantial changes to the MCL40 during the season, including the major package introduced in Hungary. That development became one of the defining technical stories of the Budapest weekend, with Mercedes taking particular notice of McLaren’s MCL40 upgrade.
The floor has been a key area of attention, and the work carried out through the first half of the season helped produce a significant improvement in Hungary. The process behind that progress also forms part of McLaren’s wider development breakthrough at the Hungaroring.
McLaren will move to a longer wheelbase for 2027
For 2027, McLaren plans to reverse direction and lengthen the wheelbase in order to exploit the aerodynamic potential of the underside of the car more effectively.
“For next season, we will move to a longer wheelbase,” Neil Houldey revealed. “From an aerodynamic point of view, a longer wheelbase provides a larger usable surface on the floor and, as the development paths for the underside of the car have matured, we are now able to manage this concept better.”
Houldey added that the original short-wheelbase decision had not appeared particularly costly when the MCL40 project was still at an early stage.
“At the beginning of the project, shortening the car did not seem to involve significant lap-time penalties.”
The change therefore does not necessarily mean McLaren views its 2026 choice as a simple mistake. Rather, the team’s understanding of where the greatest aerodynamic gains can now be found has evolved as engineers have accumulated data and explored the new regulations more deeply.
McLaren is also expected to continue developing the current MCL40 rather than abandoning the project early, because lessons learned from the 2026 car remain relevant to the 2027 concept even as key elements change. That philosophy contrasts with the different development rhythms being pursued across the grid, including Ferrari’s race-by-race approach and McLaren’s preference for larger upgrade packages.
Neil Houldey sees greater freedom in the new F1 regulations
Despite the difficulties McLaren has encountered while adapting to the new generation of cars, Neil Houldey remains positive about the technical regulations themselves. He believes the rules provide teams with enough freedom to explore noticeably different concepts.
“The regulations offer sufficient freedom,” Neil Houldey said. “In the first year of a new set of regulations, the learning curve is incredibly steep and you learn a lot by analysing the choices made by your rivals.”
According to the McLaren technical director, a closer reading of the regulations reveals that the current framework is actually less restrictive than the rules used between 2022 and 2025.
“A careful rereading of the text shows that these rules are actually more open than those from the 2022-2025 period. One obvious example is the sidepods: the outright performance coming from that area may not be enormous, but along the pit lane you can see radically different interpretations.”
That lack of convergence is one of the aspects Houldey finds most interesting about the new regulatory cycle.
“Nobody has yet identified a dominant concept, and it is fascinating to test different directions to understand which one is the right path.”
For McLaren, the MCL40 has therefore become both a race car and a crucial development platform. Its shorter wheelbase helped create valuable weight freedom at the beginning of the 2026 project, but the lessons gathered since then are now pushing Woking towards a different solution. In 2027, a longer wheelbase should give McLaren greater scope to exploit the floor as the team continues refining its understanding of Formula 1’s new aerodynamic era.
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