McLaren boss teases ‘entirely new’ car for Miami Grand Prix
The McLaren MCL40 being prepared for action, with the front brake disc fairing in place, whilst the caliper has yet to have its fairing fitted.
McLaren is targeting another Miami breakthrough, hoping lightning can strike twice after its 2024 upgrade masterstroke.
This year, the team has had even more time to focus on the upgrades after the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix. But then again, so have its rivals.
Andrea Stella says McLaren MCL40 will be completely new in Miami
Want more PlanetF1.com coverage? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for news you can trust
Although McLaren has scored only 46 points in the opening three races of the season out of a total of 144, it hasn’t been a slow start to the season for the reigning world champions – just an unreliable one.
Undone by power unit issues, McLaren recorded a double DNS at the Chinese Grand Prix, which added to Oscar Piastri’s misery as he had crashed on the formation lap in Australia.
McLaren’s first double points-haul of the campaign was in Japan where Piastri was second to Kimi Antonelli with Lando Norris in P5.
The MCL40 is not a bad car, it’s just behind the Mercedes on the track and perhaps the Ferrari too.
But like its rivals, McLaren was handed a window in which to focus on improving the car with the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian races.
It has given the team the opportunity to focus solely on development, with the prospect of pulling off another revival as it did in 2024 with its Miami upgrades that launched McLaren into the title fight.
Speaking about the team’s development ahead of Miami, team principal Andrea Stella declared the MCL40 would be a “completely new car”. But, he added, McLaren’s rivals also won’t be sitting still.
“In our intent, there was always the idea to deliver sort of a completely new car especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view for the North American races,” he told PlanetF1.com and other media during the team’s spring debrief, “so we could keep up with this plan.
“Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed helped a little bit – like I’m sure it helped all the other teams that could work more streamlined towards upgrading the car, rather than being busy with racing.
“But I could say overall that across Miami and Canada, we will see an entirely new MCL40.
“Again, I would like to stress that this is what I would expect of most of our competitors. So not necessarily is going to be a shift in the pecking order.
“It will be effectively just a check about who has been able to add more performance within the same time frame, and we also have some performance to recover, if we look at Mercedes and, to some extent, Ferrari as well.
“But we are quite happy with the development that we’ve been able to manage so hopefully we should be able to see a slightly more competitive MCL40 in Miami and then in Canada, considering that the last race was already a decent competitive performance in Japan, so we definitely look forward to the next races.”
More on McLaren from PlanetF1.com
Zak Brown plays down Max Verstappen to McLaren as alternate move tipped
Oscar Piastri responds to Max Verstappen quit threat over F1 2026 rules
Miami won’t be the first development test for McLaren who arrived on the F1 2026 grid as the defending world champions, having wrapped up the double last season.
Heading into 2026 was an all-new challenge as Formula 1 introduced new technical and engine regulations.
But rather than be disappointed at the lack of continuity after winning the titles, Stella says it has given McLaren an opportunity to show that it can rise to the challenge, just as they did in the previous era when it went from P5 in the first year to winning the Constructors’ two years later and the double the year after that.
“First of all, I would like to emphasise that, and we were reflecting internally on this, on the fact that we take quite a bit of pride internally at McLaren that we managed to turn things around in a continuity of regulations.
“Okay, so we had kind of less know-how, we needed to generate IP, we needed to generate the solutions to gain a performance and competitive advantage. And since 2023 we managed to do it, and this was something that we definitely wanted to crystallise in terms of our own achievement and consolidate the success that we’ve been able to produce.
“At the same time for sure, we would have liked to continue with the same regulations, because we were starting from a competitive position we sort of wanted to test ourselves. We wanted to test our level of maturity, our level of ability to generate new know-how when there’s a change, a reset of the regulations.
“So while the slightly uncomfortable is actually a challenge that we welcome, is a challenge that will give us a measure of where we are effectively as a team and I have to say that even some of the challenges that we started with in terms of start of the season with a little bit of a mixed bag kind of make the overall test even more probing, but even more interesting.
“So we are we are enjoying it. We are enjoying it. We look forward to show on track what we’ve been able to produce in the ground over this month, especially the last couple of months, I think they’ve been quite positive in terms of development of the current background.
“Hopefully we will see these in Miami, Canada and the following races in terms of development. So a challenge that we overall welcome, and a test to show what we’ve been able to achieve in terms of maturity of the team.”
Want to be the first to know exclusive information from the F1 paddock? Join our broadcast channel on WhatsApp to get the scoop on the latest developments from our team of accredited journalists.
You can also subscribe to the PlanetF1 YouTube channel for exclusive features, hear from our paddock journalists with stories from the heart of Formula 1 and much more!
Read next: Charles Leclerc wary of time passed as Ferrari title wait continues
