Andrea Stella spoke on the upgrades that McLaren brought to the 2026 F1 Miami GP following Sunday’s race. These upgrades seemed to improve the performance of the MCL40, scoring their first double podium of the 2026 season, with Norris P2 and Piastri P3.
Andrea Stella on the upgrade design trends he noticed at the 2026 F1 Miami GP
McLaren weren’t the only team that brought major upgrades to the F1 Miami GP. Most teams worked on their cars during the 4 week break from racing.
Following Sunday’s GP, McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella discussed the design trends and different concepts that stood out during the weekend.
“Well, I think we are, for those who are technically interested. We are in a very interesting phase. It’s a very interesting phase because if you see the sidepod concept that Red Bull introduced, that’s quite different to the sidepod concepts that, for instance, Mercedes, Ferrari have adopted.
“And the McLaren style is further different. And I think there will be a stabilisation at some stage, a convergence. But we look like we are quite far from this convergence.”
Due to it being the first year of the new regulations, every team brought slightly different designs to the 2026 F1 season. However, the longer they have to understand the regulations and how the cars work during a race weekend, the closer in design each car will become.
Stella discusses how McLaren will look at Red Bull to understand their advantages from the upgrades
Even though McLaren made a big step forward at the F1 Miami GP to catch up to Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull were also able to improve and catch up to the current Championship leader.
McLaren showed off their upgrades during Friday’s Sprint Qualifying when nobody seemed to have an answer to Norris and the McLaren’s pace. The World Champion qualfied 2 tenths ahead of Antonelli in P2, he was the only driver to make it into the 1.27s.
Norris and Piastri finished 1-2 during the Sprint. However, their pace seemed to drop off during qualfiying for Sunday’s GP. Max Verstsappen was able to show the pace of the Red Bull, starting the race in P2. Cars #4 and #81 could only 4th and 7th. Race pace was very strong, however.
Red Bull turned up to the F1 Miami GP with a different sidepod concept compared to the top 3 in the 2026 campaign to date.
Speaking in a print media session after Sunday’s race, Stella discussed how the team will look at Red Bull’s upgrades to understand the advantages they could potentially gain from this concept.
“I think there will be a process of looking at each other, testing things, certainly each team will be testing. You know, taking a look at the Red Bull concepts, to see the advantages. They have also been quite smart and innovative. In the way they have used some legality, concession to introduce such geometry.
“So, I think that the overall design of the car is far from converging. This doesn’t mean that some things have already sort of started to look like, ‘oh, that’s the direction that everyone is taking.’ But with the 2025 cars, after a few years of the regulation, they started to look very similar to each other.”
