Andrea Stella says we will see an entirely new McLaren MCL40 in Miami & Canada

While Mercedes and Ferrari were able to start work on their 2026 cars earlier since they were out of the title battle that year, McLaren were locked in a fight with Red Bull Racing's Max Verstappen, who chased eventual F1 Champion Lando Norris until the final laps of the 2025 Abu Dhabi season finale, ultimately losing out to the Briton by two points after an impressive comeback following the sacking of Christian Horner midseason.

In that regard, McLaren had to continue developing their MCL39, which compromised the conception of their title defender, the MCL40, that appears to be lacking from the chassis side, not to mention the team's ability to extract the full potential of the Mercedes power unit like the works team is doing while also suffering from reliability issues, which meant none of their cars could start the 2026 Chinese Grand Prix.

With F1 taking an unexpected break in April due to the cancellation of the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix because of the war in the Middle East, McLaren, as their rivals, have tried to make use of this time off track to develop their cars and learn more about them.

Speaking at a media session in Woking earlier this week, with GrandPrix247 in attendance, McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella claimed, regardless of the April break, the team had a massive upgrade for the MCL40 planned for Miami.

He said: "There was ​always the idea to deliver a completely new car, especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view, for ​the North American races.

"We could keep up with this ⁠plan," he went on. "Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed sort of helped a little bit, like I'm sure [that] helped ​all the other teams that could work more streamlined towards upgrading the car rather than being busy with racing.

"Across Miami and Canada, we will see an entirely new MCL40," the Italian went on, explaining the magnitude of the upgrade while downplaying its effect, adding: "This is what I would expect of most of ​our competitors, so it's not necessarily 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 timeframe," Stella concluded.

McLaren appeared to have made a step forward, beating Ferrari in the 2026 Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, where Oscar Piastri finished second behind winner Kimi Antonelli. Charles Leclerc was third.