The Mid-Season Pivot: Analysing McLaren’s Two-Stage Upgrade Push From Spa to the Hungaroring

By Diane Versaevel

As Formula 1 heads through the final back-to-back races before the 2026 summer break, McLaren finds itself at an important turning point. Sitting 154 points behind championship leaders Mercedes, the team has taken a smart, two-step approach to improving their car across the Belgian and Hungarian Grands Prix. Rather than trying to change everything all at once at Spa-Francorchamps, McLaren introduced targeted tweaks to boost straight-line speed and reliability in Belgium, while saving their biggest performance push for Hungary.

At Spa-Francorchamps, the MCL40 appeared with a lightweight setup featuring a brand-new low-downforce rear wing assembly designed to shed drag across the 7.004-kilometer layout. The primary objective was mitigating McLaren’s straight-line speed deficit through the high-speed blasts of Sectors 1 and 3. Complementing this aerodynamic adjustment, McLaren received Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains’ updated Specification-3 Internal Combustion Engine. Having already debuted with the works Mercedes team in Austria and customer entrants Alpine and Williams at Silverstone, the upgraded power unit prioritizes internal reliability to resolve engine-side issues that hampered customer programs earlier in the campaign.

At Spa, the team focused on making the car run cleaner and faster down the long straights. They brought a specialized low-downforce rear wing designed to cut down air resistance. Alongside that change, McLaren finally fitted an updated Mercedes engine, which was brought in to fix reliability issues that had caused headaches earlier in the year. Even though Lando Norris had to take a ten-place grid penalty to get the new engine fitted, the early practice sessions showed promising signs, with Norris and teammate Oscar Piastri keeping pace near the front of the pack.

Despite those positive steps, McLaren was clear that Spa was never meant to transform the car overnight. Technical director Neil Houldey made it clear beforehand that the team wasn’t expecting a sudden jump to the very top of the grid in Belgium. Instead, Spa was about fixing weak spots, gathering valuable data, and making sure the car runs smoothly at high speeds.

The real test comes at the Hungarian Grand Prix. The Hungaroring is a completely different challenge. it is tight, twisty, and requires maximum grip through every corner. That is where McLaren plans to launch a much broader set of updates aimed at giving the car more overall grip and better handling. If those changes deliver as promised, Norris and Piastri will have a real chance to fight closer to Mercedes and Ferrari before the sport takes its month-long summer break.

By splitting their updates between Spa and Hungary, McLaren is playing the long game. They sorted out their top speed and engine reliability first, setting the stage for a proper attack in Budapest. Whether this strategic step-by-step plan is enough to close the gap to the leaders will depend entirely on how much extra pace the car finds when those new parts hit the track in Hungary.