McLaren dismiss cost cap concerns as Stella reveals development plan

McLaren is confident it has enough financial firepower to stay in Formula 1’s development race, with Andrea Stella revealing the team specifically protected budget for an upgrade battle under the cost cap.

Formula 1’s new regulatory cycle is only in its eighth Grand Prix weekend, meaning the cars are still in their infancy, with a lot of room to develop the cars and find performance.

Andrea Stella addresses McLaren cost cap concerns

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McLaren delivered its first big upgrade in two parts, split between the Miami and Canadian races.

The team stated in its Montreal preview, “As established at the beginning of the season, Miami served as the first big step in our plan to add performance to the MCL40.

“This continues this weekend in Montreal, with a number of new components across the floor, chassis, front and rear wings, bodywork, halo and roll hoop.”

The team introduced further updates to the MCL40 at the Monaco Grand Prix before bringing minor changes to the track in Barcelona and Austria.

The latter included McLaren’s adaptation of the ‘Macarena’ wing, although the team abandoned plans to trial it in practice as it didn’t pass the final sign-off checks.

McLaren’s updates, though, have been no match for Ferrari who have already brought two big packages to the track in Miami and Barcelona.

It has had rivals pondering how some teams are able to introduce new parts week in and week out given all the teams are operating within a budget cap of $215 million.

“I think everyone is scratching their heads at how the top teams manage to do what they’ve done this year,” said Carlos Sainz. “And you look at the last five races, no one is bringing more upgrades than the top teams.”

Toto Wolff, Mercedes team principal, says the rate of spending from some teams, notably Ferrari, is unsustainable.

“In my opinion,” said the Austrian, “they need to be running out of money soon, cost cap money, because we can’t do that, simply lacking the buffer and cost cap to be able to bring so many parts in the way they do.

“So hopefully that’s going to change towards the end of the season, when they won’t be able to bring any parts anymore.”

More on F1 2026 budget cap

Toto Wolff predicts Ferrari will ‘be running out of money soon’ in cost cap concern

Carlos Sainz joins Fernando Alonso in F1 upgrade mystery

The question of the cost cap and whether McLaren could be one of the teams burning through its budget was put to the Woking outfit’s team principal, Stella.

The Italian said he’s not concerned as McLaren had specifically allocated budget to developing the car as the team knew this season would be a development war.

“We always said in relation to the 2026 season that irrespective of the starting position it was going to be at the battle of development,” Stella explained to PlanetF1.com and other media in Austria.

“So, we wanted to make sure that this was not only a point for the technical development, but also was going to be a point for the financial availability.

“Like there’s no point in saying that it’s going to be a battle of development if you cannot afford it.

“So we sort of allocated our budget such that we protected a certain amount of this budget to be in condition to develop the car.

“At the moment we don’t have a concern that we will not be able to develop the car because of budget.

“We are completely focused in making sure that from a technical point of view, we are in a condition to create the aerodynamic upgrades, mechanical upgrades, some stuff also coming on tyre conditioning, such that we can make the MCL40 faster.

“So not a concern for us at the moment.”

McLaren is third in the constructors’ championship after eight race weekends on 159 points, 143 behind championship leader Mercedes.

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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