Craig ScarboroughAs McLaren completed 1000 races at the Monaco Grand Prix, their comeback over the past two seasons has been somewhat halted by the new regulations.
There have been moments of promise with the MCL40 as the team aggressively develop new parts and strategies for the 2026 car.
Power Unit
Having won the championship in 2026 when Mercedes struggled with the ground effect era, having a chassis advantage with a supply or Mercedes power units was seen to have been a huge advantage for the team.
But the Mercedes link has proven to be a weak point for the team so far this year – control strategies and reliability issues blighting the early part of this season.
Pre-season saw a spat between the long-time partners, where McLaren felt under supported by their Power Unit partner.
There’s no question that the overall performance of the Mercedes PU (hybrid and combustion) is at the peak of the field, much of the early season pace has been with the factory team.
It seems that whilst they both have the same hardware, the knowledge in how to control it is very much in Mercedes’ hands.
It’s down to teams to know how to operate the PU around a lap, with this year’s emphasis on energy management, this has given Mercedes a key advantage.
McLaren seems to have lagged behind in their hybrid control strategies, leading to less performance than their rivals despite the greater potential.
Both sides argue their points. But wherever blame lies this has taken McLaren a few races to fully exploit the hybrid side of the power unit.
Adding more angst to the relationship, the Mercedes power unit is still proving to be unreliable on the hybrid side, in particular the Battery and strangely on Lando Norris’s car.
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Track time and race results have been lost to failures.
This will no doubt lead to grid penalties when the pool of hardware for the season is exhausted and new parts are required.
It’s a problem that is at least shared with the other Mercedes engined car, who have all had a series of reliability problems.
The spectre of a reduced power combustion engine coming with the compression ratio trick being circumvented with new testing rules for the combustion to be added to the race pool.
It may, however, be offset somewhat by the ADUO rules giving Mercedes development tokens to change combustion engine parts.
Aerodynamics
McLaren certain have amongst the better aero/chassis towards the end of the last rules cycle.
The launch spec of the car was on target to carry this over but has been left behind by Mercedes and Ferrari.
At least the car appears to be consistently better to handle than the Red Bull, although the relative pace between these teams still varies by track.
The extended gap in April after the first three races gave McLaren time to work on the aero and the car’s updates from Miami and Canada have been significant.
Almost every surface has been attended to and loophole opportunities opened up by rivals have been exploited.
It’s probably the floor that’s been given the biggest change and provides the most performance.
Starting its leading edge, the teeth forming the Floor Leading Edge devices (FLEDs) have gained a horizontal slat, copying Ferraris launch spec.
This guides air flow under the floor where the general shape has been changed and the rear corner ahead of the tyres has also been revised.
The rear corner slots are large and more complex, which is a predicted trend for development throughout the season.
It’s just behind here where McLaren made another significant change, with the introduction of slotted diffuser wall.
Many other teams launched with this detail as I outlined in my pre-season articles.
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The side wall of the diffuser is opened up to allow airflow into the diffuser.
While this may seem counter intuitive, this trick keeps the air flow passing through diffuser creating more expansion for more downforce.
Then the exhaust has gained a small internal plate to act as a flick tail.
It’s not as extreme as other teams, but a start to the path for the now common practice, again taking Ferrari’s idea and reinterpreting it.
Back towards the front of the car, the floorboards behind the front wheels gained a big redesign, the initial triangular boards are shrunk down with a curved upper edge.
Then the slotted vanes along the bottom are redistributed, the forward sections of these vanes actually create downwash and have been made longer, again a counter intuitive idea, that seems to work.
This change was made in hand with a subtle reprofiling of the sidepod inlet and shoulder shape.
Less successful has been the new front wing, which appeared in Miami and was still being modified in Barcelona.
In early tests the wing wasn’t providing the results the teams were expecting and has been back-to-back tested with the old wing through Friday’s free practices.
The new wing has reshaped profiles, the pressure distribution appearing to be loaded further inboard reducing the impact around the front tyre.
Another feature of the wings’ main spans is the old wing has the split and pivot for the straight-line mode slightly inboard. The new wing moves that out to the endplate itself.
So, when in straight-line mode and the wing is flattened there is no wing profile obstructing airflow around the front wheel.
Then the endplate is reshaped with a steeper upper edge and the scrolled footplate being more aggressive.
It was the footplate that gained further updates in Barcelona. In this form the new front wing assembly finally saw action in Catalunya.
Other changes around the car included a halo fairing, fins on the roll hoop and creased shaping added to the rear wing endplate.
Tyre advantage
Perhaps more impactful than the outright performance of the 2025 car was its ability to manage its tyres through a race.
Getting the tyres into their working range is still a primary performance factor in 2026, but through the first races start line performance and energy management have been a bigger factor.
Even with the heat and abrasive track surface in Barcelona stressing the tyres, the difference between the cars tyre management was minimal.
This appears to have negated one of the team’s big advantages.
It may not be the fault of the McLaren losing direction, merely the multilink front suspension being copied by its rivals over the winter and closing the gap to them in this specific area.
With a conventional double wishbone front suspension, the ability to alter geometry of the wheel through steering and its vertical travel is limited.
By switching the lower wishbone from a single “V” shaped arm to two separate arms creating virtual pivot axis brings more potential to alter the wheel geometry and several axes and with it more ability to control tyre temperature.
While McLaren struggled to perfect the handling for each driver with this set up through 2025, its rivals appear to have arrived at the right feel and tyre management straight away.
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Where do McLaren go now?
As the team have lost its tyre advantage but also closed the power unit gap to its supplier, Mercedes.
What do McLaren have to do to get on terms with Mercedes and resurgent Ferrari.
The power unit side in terms of Combustion performance and hybrid reliability appear to lie firmly in Mercedes hand and will only ever bring power unit parity with them.
So, it will rely on the chassis and in particular aero to get back on the front foot. With 15 races left this season, there’s still plenty of point to recover their slow start to the season.
But having already changed nearly everything and with aero testing and budget restrictions it will be hard for McLaren to be able to invest enough to find the last bit of pace to lead a race on merit.
Looking further into the future with the potential for new V8 power units to be introduced early, if the green light is given, McLaren will have a hard choice to stay as a customer with Mercedes or another manufacturer.
Or even potentially go it alone with a ‘McLaren’ engine.
Seeing Red Bull’s combustion engine advantage (according ADUO) from a standing start this year, the temptation could be to go this direction.
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Fraser Masefield
