After the five-week break, McLaren enters the Miami Grand Prix with renewed optimism — and with what team principal Andrea Stella describes as an “entirely new” MCL40.

After a disrupted opening phase of the 2026 Formula One season, marked by calendar cancellations and three non‑starts, the British team believes its long‑planned North American upgrade package will finally unlock the performance potential it has only shown in flashes so far.

Despite the setbacks, McLaren sits third in the Constructors’ Championship and arrives in Miami buoyed by Oscar Piastri’s podium in Japan. That result, achieved without any new components since Australia, has strengthened the team’s confidence that its underlying concept is sound — and that the upcoming revisions will deliver a meaningful step.

The first three races of 2026 — Australia, China, and Japan — offered a fragmented picture of the competitive order. With Bahrain and Saudi Arabia cancelled, teams had limited opportunities to correlate their winter simulations with real‑world data. McLaren responded by prioritising stability over aggressive early‑season development.

The team introduced a single upgrade package in Australia, consisting of a revised floor, a reshaped rear suspension fairing, and a new rear wing. These updates formed the aerodynamic baseline of the MCL40, reflecting McLaren’s interpretation of the radically revised 2026 regulations, which place greater emphasis on upper‑body aerodynamics and tyre‑wake management.

Across China and Japan, McLaren submitted no further upgrades. This was not a sign of stagnation but a deliberate choice: the team wanted to validate its aerodynamic philosophy across different circuit types before committing to the next development phase.

That validation has now been completed — and the next phase is substantial.

Speaking ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, Stella confirmed that McLaren’s long‑planned North American upgrade package represents a major aerodynamic overhaul.

“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,” Stella said. “So we could keep up with this plan.”

The unusual early‑season break — created by the cancelled Middle Eastern rounds — gave McLaren additional time to refine and finalise the package.

“Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed sort of helped a little bit, like I’m sure helped all the other teams that could work more streamlined towards upgrading the car rather than being busy with racing.”

The result is a comprehensive revision of the MCL40’s aerodynamic surfaces, likely including a new floor, new bodywork, and a reworked rear‑end architecture designed to improve flow conditioning and aerodynamic efficiency under the 2026 rules.

Stella did not downplay the scale of the changes: “I could say overall that across Miami and Canada, we will see an entirely new MCL40.”

While the scope of the upgrades is significant, Stella was careful to temper expectations. The Miami package is designed to unlock performance, but McLaren is not assuming that rivals have stood still.

“I would like to stress that this is what I would expect of most of our competitors,” he said. “So not necessarily it’s going to be a shift in the pecking order — it will be effectively just a check who has been able to add more performance within the same time frame.”

McLaren knows it still has ground to recover relative to Mercedes — the early benchmark of the 2026 season — and, to a lesser extent, Ferrari.

“We also have some performance to recover if we look at Mercedes and to some extent Ferrari as well.”

The Miami weekend will therefore serve as both a performance test and a development checkpoint: a chance to measure the effectiveness of McLaren’s aerodynamic concept against rivals who are also expected to bring major upgrades.