McLaren’s upward trajectory at the Hungaroring this weekend appears to be pretty straightforward – the team brought their first significant MCL40 upgrade package for a while, edged ahead in the development race, and found enough performance to propel Lando Norris to pole.
However, for the typically cautious Team Principal Andrea Stella, it’s not quite as straightforward as that.
The Italian believes that on balance Ferrari still have the advantage in Budapest, and that while helped by the upgrades and better power unit optimisation, Norris‘ pole was also a result of the team making the best of the conditions in terms of set-up and tyre management on a slippery and bumpy track.
“The main improvements from a lap time point of view that we could cash in here in Hungary comes from the aerodynamic upgrades, that you will see in the submission were mainly related to a new floor,” he said after Saturday’s session.
“Then there was a front brake duct, there were some rear brake duct winglets, and some other small parts. So this is the main contribution to improving the lap time.
“When we look at the data, we see also that from a power unit point of view, everything seems to run pretty smoothly.
“Some of the inconsistencies we had in Spa, we don’t seem to experience them here, and this is thanks to the good collaboration between the McLaren engineers and the HPP engineers.
“So overall, this added a certain amount of lap time, which in fairness, we didn’t think that would be enough to be in pole position in Hungary – where we knew that Ferrari would have been definitely the favourite.”
Stella says the numbers indicate that an optimum lap for Ferrari would have put the SF-26 ahead of Norris, which is perhaps not surprising given that Lewis Hamilton lost out by just 0.012s.
“When we look carefully at the data, we see that if we take the best corners of Leclerc and the best corners of Hamilton, I think still they had the highest potential,” he said.
“And some of the result I think is also this time it’s also down to execution. Execution from a team point of view, because we’ve been, I think, particularly diligent in finding some good countermeasures for the difficult conditions, and good execution from the drivers.”
He made it clear where the red cars hold the upper hand, adding: “I think Ferrari still have the best chassis in terms of grip in the corners. This is very apparent in braking. Their performance in corner 1, in corner 12, when you brake and turn into low-speed, it’s still a decent step ahead of everyone else.
“We have been able to improve the car in the medium/high-speed, where we are more comparable to Ferrari. But if you take corner 1, corner 12, 13, we still lose a decent amount of time.
“I have to say that despite Hungary being dominated by the performance in the corners, we actually make some of our lap time difference to Ferrari in the straights.”
Whatever the balance of power between the top teams, it’s clear that McLaren have bolted performance onto the car with their latest round of upgrades.
That was usually the case over the team’s title-winning campaigns in 2024 and 2025, but was perhaps less apparent earlier this season.
Nevertheless, Stella downplayed any suggestion that McLaren can henceforth gain an advantage over rivals with a more effective development programme.
“The upgrades we took here are part of a round of upgrades that is distributed over a few rounds,” he said. “So this was the first part of these upgrades. There will be a few things coming for the next races.
“I have to say, this year pretty much the top teams have always been successful in introducing upgrades to what I can see, and I think this is because the rules are still relatively immature, and the opportunities in terms of developing the car are almost low-hanging fruit to cash in.
“I don’t think McLaren has any particular advantage, in like, ‘Oh everything we take is successful.’ I think everyone is now doing a good job in terms of bringing successful upgrades.
“I think it will be more about how many upgrades the top teams will be in condition to deliver so far, and for what’s left of the season, because we are only midway in this season.
“So I think it’s far too early to say whether this is a turning point for McLaren, or not. We just look at the facts. The fact is that the upgrades delivered as we intended, but like I said, I think today the pole position is a little bit of an over-achievement, thanks to execution and maximising the potential that was available.”
One thing is certain – there’s plenty more to come for the MCL40.
“Definitely, in our approach to the budget cap, we knew that 2026 would have been not much about the starting point, but more about the race to upgrade the car,” said Stella. “So we wanted to leave enough overhead in our budget prediction, such that we were in condition to spend money on upgrading the car.”
