McLaren have bonus goal for Miami upgrades beyond making Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s car faster

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McLaren are now expected to debut an upgrade package for the MCL40 at the 2026 F1 Miami Grand Prix, in the team’s bid to understand Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri’s car.

The papaya crew were the team to beat across the past two years, as McLaren won back-to-back constructors’ titles and took Norris to the F1 drivers’ championship last season. But the MCL40 has only been the third-best car on the grid at the start of the 2026 regulations era.

Mercedes have hit the ground running in 2026, as George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli have taken every pole position and win to date. Ferrari have also started the year strongly to sit 45 points behind Mercedes but 44 ahead of McLaren in the early constructors’ standings.

McLaren have only made a handful of tweaks to the MCL40 since the car broke cover during pre-season testing. The Woking squad introduced a new rear wing and revisions to the floor and rear suspension in Australia, along with a new rear brake winglet arrangement in China.

McLaren hope their Miami Grand Prix upgrades make the MCL40 easier to understand

The tweaks that McLaren have made to their car, plus their ever-increasing understanding of Mercedes’ 2026 engine, saw Piastri almost win the Japanese Grand Prix last time out. Piastri was comfortably holding Russell off for the lead before the pair lost out under the safety car.

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Piastri’s P2 finish in the Japanese GP masked the McLaren MCL40’s biggest issues, too, as his race pace in clear air and Suzuka’s resurfaced track hid the car’s clear lack of downforce and high rate of tyre wear. So, McLaren now hope to improve their car with updates in Miami.

But FormulaTecnica notes that while improving the outright pace of the MCL40 is McLaren’s ‘primary’ goal with their expected upgrades at the Miami GP, the Woking outfit also hope to make the car ‘easier to understand’. McLaren feel they have to find a wider working window.

Having designed the shortest car on the 2026 F1 grid, the McLaren MCL40 has a clear lack of downforce thanks to its smaller floor. But McLaren are also believed to be looking for ways to widen the MCL40’s operating window, and help Norris and Piastri find more performance.

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Piastri’s P2 at Suzuka was McLaren’s first podium of the 2026 F1 season, which did not look too likely after the Australian Grand Prix and the Chinese Grand Prix. The MCL40 was fast in qualifying in Shanghai, in particular, but McLaren’s race pace has so far largely been lacking.

Norris and Piastri both recording did not starts in the Chinese GP due to separate issues with Mercedes’ battery even meant McLaren lost out on a full race’s worth of data. Now, the gap in the calendar this April has given the papaya crew a chance to prepare updates for Miami.

The Miami GP on May 1-3 is now the next stop on the calendar after F1 cancelled the races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia owing to the current situation in the Middle East. McLaren have won the Miami GP in each of the past two years, through Norris in 2024 and Piastri in 2025.