McLaren is revising its 2026 Formula 1 development path as the team adapts to the upcoming rule changes, with team principal Andrea Stella saying it has moved away from some early concepts after gaining more information about the new regulations. Stella said McLaren’s best chance to close the gap will come from a major upgrade push around the summer shutdown, with development planned both before and after the break that follows the Hungarian Grand Prix. He said aerodynamic development has become the main competitive battleground, while mechanical setup now plays a smaller role than in earlier generations of cars.

Stella said McLaren remained about half a second behind Mercedes and Ferrari after the British Grand Prix, where Lando Norris finished fourth in the main race and reached the podium in the Sprint. He called Norris’s fourth-place finish an overachievement for McLaren’s current pace, saying it was helped more by issues affecting other teams than by a true breakthrough. McLaren is 154 points behind Mercedes in the constructors’ standings, Ferrari has moved ahead after winning two of the last three races, and McLaren has yet to win this season, with four podium finishes.

Norris offered a sharper view of the team’s current state after Silverstone, saying McLaren needed “many things better” and more upgrades to become more competitive. He described the car as “pretty poor,” called it one of the hardest Formula 1 cars he has ever driven and said recent smaller updates had not delivered the gains the team expected. Norris said McLaren had not introduced a major upgrade since the Miami Grand Prix, while rival teams had kept improving, and he also criticized the energy-management style of racing at tracks like Silverstone as “not how Formula 1 should be.”