McLaren’s MCL40 upgrades delivered better-than-expected gains at the Hungarian Grand Prix, helping Lando Norris secure victory and confirming that the team’s revised technical direction is working. Far more than a conventional increase in aerodynamic load, the Budapest package corrected some of the car’s underlying conceptual limitations and put McLaren firmly back into Formula 1’s development race.
The 2026 Hungarian Grand Prix result therefore represented much more than another victory. The Hungaroring marked the debut of the first major development package for the MCL40, comprising a series of upgrades designed to address weaknesses that had emerged during the opening part of the season.
Some of those shortcomings were also linked to the delay accumulated after McLaren’s battle for the 2025 championship continued, perhaps unexpectedly, until the final race. According to team principal Andrea Stella, the successful Budapest upgrade now allows the Woking team to rejoin the development contest fully.
McLaren MCL40 upgrades unlock formidable Hungary race pace
Lando Norris’s victory was built on the remarkable pace he produced during the race. Once he had moved ahead of team-mate Oscar Piastri, the British driver was able to lower his lap times by more than one second per lap. McLaren had not demonstrated that kind of superiority at any previous stage of the season.
The reigning world champion team appeared to be taken somewhat by surprise by Lando Norris’s speed and eventually instructed him to slow down. The driver was not attempting to prove a point; he simply had more performance available than expected.
“The reality is that he simply had an enormous amount of pace,” Andrea Stella explained. “He didn’t particularly need to push to be quick. We were managing some reliability-related aspects, which is why we asked him to avoid certain situations, but Lando was simply very fast.”
It was an obvious performance step produced by technical development and stronger execution finally working in the same direction. Lando Norris had already demonstrated McLaren’s progress by ending Mercedes’ pole-position streak in Hungary, beating Lewis Hamilton by just 0.012 seconds in qualifying.
Hungarian GP upgrade performs better than McLaren expected
After qualifying, Andrea Stella acknowledged that Ferrari still possessed extremely strong one-lap potential. Nevertheless, McLaren had succeeded in maximising every detail of its weekend. The race then provided definitive confirmation that the Budapest package had worked even better than anticipated.
“The improvement in competitiveness can be attributed entirely to the upgrades we brought here,” Andrea Stella said. “We thought the lap-time gain would not be enough to secure pole position, and we certainly did not expect such competitive race pace.”
The new floor, changes to the brake ducts and the other components introduced at the Hungaroring therefore delivered a greater benefit than McLaren’s simulations had predicted. Together, they gave the MCL40 a level of competitiveness that had still appeared some distance away only a few weeks earlier.
The result allowed Lando Norris to claim his first Hungarian Grand Prix victory, which he subsequently described as one of the best drives of his career. It also provided McLaren with the clearest evidence yet that the team’s technical recovery is gathering momentum.
McLaren corrects the MCL40’s fundamental concept
The most significant element of Andrea Stella’s assessment was that the Hungarian package did not merely add aerodynamic load. Instead, it introduced a correction to the underlying concept of the car in several important areas.
“The upgrades introduce components that follow a slightly different concept in certain areas of the car,” Andrea Stella revealed. “After putting the MCL40 on track, and also looking at some cars that were faster than ours, we realised that we needed to correct the direction of the project.”
Following the opening races of the championship, McLaren’s engineers concluded that some of the original design decisions were not delivering the anticipated potential. The team consequently chose to alter its development path, while also studying the philosophies used by the cars that were proving more effective at that stage of the season.
McLaren’s aerodynamic department was tasked with identifying a new direction and rapidly turning those findings into components that could be fitted to the car. Andrea Stella publicly thanked the aerodynamics staff for their contribution, highlighting what he considers one of the modern McLaren team’s defining strengths.
“When McLaren understands which direction to follow, then we are capable of developing very effectively,” Andrea Stella said.
Late component delivery completes race against time
The statement was supported by McLaren’s recent history. The Woking team has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to recover once it identifies the correct technical path, having made major advances during both 2023 and 2024. The Budapest weekend suggested that the MCL40 has now also found a stronger technical platform upon which its future developments can be built.
However, getting the complete package onto both cars required an intense effort behind the scenes. Some of the new parts were delivered at the circuit only hours before they were due to be used.
“Some components arrived on Friday evening to be installed on Oscar Piastri’s car on Saturday morning,” Andrea Stella explained. “It really was a race against time, and I want to congratulate the entire team for managing to put these upgrades on the track.”
McLaren’s performance was ultimately enough to deliver the victory, although the team’s hopes of placing both cars on the podium disappeared following Oscar Piastri’s late retirement in Hungary.
McLaren and Mercedes improve power unit exploitation
The improvement was not restricted to aerodynamics. McLaren also made progress in how it used the Mercedes power unit. Operating as a customer team in modern Formula 1 inevitably means that McLaren does not possess the same depth of knowledge as the works Mercedes operation.
Andrea Stella had explained during previous race weekends that McLaren did not yet have all the simulation tools required to extract the Mercedes power unit’s complete potential, particularly when managing electrical energy. Budapest appeared to represent an important step forward in this area as well.
“When I thanked the team for the upgrades, I forgot to thank HPP,” Andrea Stella said. “Here at the Hungaroring, McLaren and Mercedes HPP did their best work of the season in exploiting every single millisecond from the power unit. Pole position was secured by only twelve milliseconds, and that demonstrates how much performance there was still to find.”
Tyre management shows signs of progress
The MCL40’s interaction with its tyres also appeared to improve at the Hungaroring. McLaren has focused on this weakness since the beginning of the season, and Andrea Stella believes the latest aerodynamic changes may have begun producing results, particularly over race distances.
“I hope that part of the work carried out with these upgrades has also improved the interaction with the tyres,” the McLaren team principal said. “It is an area we have concentrated on since the beginning of the year, and I believe we are starting to see the first results, especially in terms of race pace.
“There is still work to do, particularly in cold races, but in hot conditions these improvements appear to have been effective.”
Andrea Stella expects development fight to continue
Despite McLaren’s enthusiasm after its Budapest breakthrough, Andrea Stella remains convinced that the championship will be decided by each team’s ability to improve continuously rather than by one successful upgrade package.
“If we want to be able to fight consistently for victories, we must continue to focus on upgrades,” Andrea Stella concluded. “We are not naive; we know that everyone else will do the same. It will be a development race until the final Grand Prix. The good news is that McLaren is back in this development race while fighting for the leading positions.”
