McLaren is hoping its upgrade plan can do two things at once: close the gap to the front of the grid while also forming an understanding of which aerodynamic concept it should be targeting for next year's Formula 1 season. Team principal Andrea Stella has laid out his thinking on the team's upgrade plan following the Singapore race.
Reigning champion Lando Norris said that he believed the papaya machinery was the fourth-fastest car on the grid, with him going as far as to call it "just full on and mentally draining because of how hard you have to work behind the wheel."
Stella wasn't surprised by the outfit's lack of performance over the recent races, especially compared to the likes of Red Bull, which has introduced successful upgrades to its car.
"So overall I think there's no big surprises," he told journalists. "It was good to see that here in Singapore we are where we expected to be. I think, Verstappen and Red Bull, they are just taking advantage of the upgrades that they have delivered. And it's what we call this season the ping-pong.
"Basically people come with upgrades, even if like in the case of Mercedes I understand that they have some issues themselves. But when people come with upgrades they can take a little step forward. And even if here Red Bull when they were kind of dominant, but compared to us they had three tenths of a second. And three tenths of a second is a range that you can add with an upgrade."
Lando Norris, McLaren
Photo by: Clive Mason / Getty Images
Asked whether more upgrades were on the way and what the team could take from the next few races, Stella answered:
"We do plan to deliver some upgrades," he confirmed. "We hope that they will be able to fill this gap that we have to the best cars and put McLaren in condition to fight for podiums on merit. And then whether we can fight for the victory this, I think we will have to see probably the last three races, because this the upgrades will be delivered in phases.
"It's important for us that we deliver upgrades because we are in a close fight for a championship position. But we also want to prove some of the fundamental concepts that we'll carry into next year's car because at this level of maturity of the cars you are starting to push the aerodynamic development and you may start to see that things work.
"But some things may not work because aerodynamics is starting to get complicated enough after, what it's basically two years of development if we consider that the development started the 2 January 2025 and now we are well into 2026. So after two years now it's complex.
"It may go right, it may go wrong. So we wanted to track test some of the fundamentals we carry into next year. And I think this is quite convenient because Red Bull pretty much they are on par with us in terms of point and they are ahead in terms of competitive and we wanted to set a quest to Ferrari in the championship."
Whether the upgrades bear fruit is another question, but McLaren has a strong track record of getting this right.