There seem to be more significant upgrades from a number of teams this year, McLaren’s being the latest. Will the top four teams be bringing many more in the second half of the season or is there a limit to what they can do? – Richard
All the F1 teams headed into 2026 knowing that the season would be defined by development.
When there is a new rule set, this is always the case. The longer a set of rules exists, the more a) the car designs converge; b) teams get into diminishing returns.
But at the start, progress comes faster and in bigger steps, and that explains the fluctuation in form between the top teams so far this season.
Typically, a team will bring an upgrade, their competitiveness will increase, but then it will shift as other teams bring their own upgrades.
The longer a team leaves it between upgrades, the more they fall back.
That’s why McLaren, for example, made a leap forward with their Miami upgrade, but slowly slipped back as Mercedes and Ferrari brought their own big developments in Canada and Spain.
Then, McLaren leapt forwards – even more than they expected – with their Hungary upgrade. And they have another due in Zandvoort. And more to come after that.
Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull also have developments to come after the summer break.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in Hungary: “I still believe that if we want to be in a position to fight for victories consistently in the future, we need to keep our focus on delivering more upgrades. That is the plan, but we are not naive. We know that this will be the plan for all the teams.
“Like it’s always been in this 2026 season, it’s a matter of a race of upgrades. And the good news is that McLaren is now back in this race of upgrades while fighting for the lead.
“But I expect that the car that will be the best car at the end of the season will keep adding tenths of a second in the next 11 races, probably as much as half a second. So definitely a lot of work ahead of everyone, not only McLaren.”
The limiting factor is the cost cap – all teams are restricted to spending no more than $215m on racing and development this season.
This means teams have to be strategic in how they deploy their new parts, “rather than just throwing it in at every grand prix, like in the past”, as Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff put it in Hungary.
He added: “We’re bringing upgrades, we’re closely monitoring how much we can bring. At the moment, cost cap-wise, we’re in a good spot. We’ve tried to have it a little bit more second-half-of-the-season weighted, and we’ll see if that’s enough.”
Why don’t McLaren make their own engines? They often seem to struggle because they rely on others’ (Mercedes) power units, who are also a direct competitor. Surely McLaren have the expertise and they could benefit their road car industry and their F1 car if they became a works team. – Jack
Making a Formula 1 engine is a highly specialised enterprise. It’s also extremely expensive. The manufacturers supplying engines to F1 this year have all spent hundreds of millions of pounds developing their power-units.
Apart from Red Bull, all are car manufacturers who have wider automotive companies to offset the cost, and expertise on which to lean.
There is now an engine budget cap, set at $190m in a company’s inaugural year, and $148.5m after that.
McLaren is a road-car manufacturer. But it does not build engines. It outsources its engines to a UK company called Ricardo.
The plans for the next F1 engine, due in either 2030 or 2031, are still being formalised, and there is considerable debate about them.
However, one aspect all stakeholders are agreed upon is for the costs to come down, perhaps even to the point where becoming a supplier of customer engines becomes a viable business proposition, which is not the case at the moment.
McLaren have proved they can win titles as a customer team, but they have also had frustrations with their Mercedes relationship this year. They have discovered how customer teams are on the back foot when it comes to maximising the operations of such complex engines at the start of a new regulation cycle.
As for the future, McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown said at the Monaco Grand Prix: “Priority one is to stay with Mercedes. They’ve been a great partner. Any time a new regulation comes out, we’ll take a look and see, is it something technically that’s interesting? Is it something fiscally that makes sense?
“We’ll go through that process when that happens. But sitting here right now, we’re extremely happy with Mercedes and we anticipate continuing with them.”
