Watch out for McLaren in Miami

After its success over the last couple of years, McLaren’s relatively muted start to the F1 2026 season must be considered a disappointment.

Yet if the pattern of 2023-25 is to be repeated, McLaren could come back at Mercedes and Ferrari quite quickly starting from this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix…

Why McLaren could be the team to watch at the Miami Grand Prix

A version of this article originally appeared in PlanetF1.com’s conclusions from the 2026 Japanese Grand Prix

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Around a year ago, when talk of a significant Mercedes advantage for 2026 stopped being mere rumour and started being treated as fact, a worst-case scenario did the rounds.

The worry was that F1 in 2026 would effectively become a two-tier category, split down the middle between the haves and the have-nots.

The Mercedes-powered teams, the theory went, would lock out the top-eight slots on the grid two-by-two on most weekends like some Merc-sponsored Noah’s Ark, leaving the remaining seven to fight over the scraps on the fringes of the points.

Mercifully, and largely thanks to the competence of Ferrari and Red Bull Powertrains, it has not turned out that way.

Oscar Piastri vs Lando Norris: McLaren head-to-head stats for F1 2026 season

F1 2026: Head-to-head qualifying statistics between teammates

F1 2026: Head-to-head race statistics between teammates

Yet among the bigger surprises of 2026 so far is that Mercedes’ three customer teams – McLaren, Alpine and Williams – have not made more of the inherent advantage the best engine has given them.

A repeat of 2014, when Williams and Force India were catapulted overnight into podium contention by a Mercedes power unit, this is not.

McLaren has been particularly vocal on the reasons why those Merc-a-thon fears have not translated into reality, pointing frequently over recent weeks to its basic lack of knowledge, integration and optimisation compared to the Mercedes factory team.

Constructors’ champions for the last two seasons, McLaren is back to feeling like a second-class citizen in 2026 now the natural balance between works team and customer has been restored.

Yet McLaren has come too far and grown too strong over the last few years for it to meekly fade away now.

After a muted start to the season, Oscar Piastri’s podium at Suzuka was a timely reminder of the team’s enduring quality.

Just three races in, McLaren already appears to be rapidly filling the knowledge gaps with which it started 2026, sufficiently enough to see off Ferrari in Japan after two weeks of absorbing the data from the Australia-China double header.

What should prove to be the weakest portion of the team’s season has been negotiated.

And now?

Now comes the development race and the area in which McLaren has particularly excelled over recent years.

No team on the grid will have put the five-week break between now and Miami to better use.

McLaren teases ‘completely new car’ for Miami Grand Prix

Speaking to PlanetF1.com and other media outlets last week, Andrea Stella teased that McLaren will bring “an entirely new” car to the upcoming North American races in Miami and Canada.

He said: “In our intent, there was always the idea to deliver a completely new car especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view for the North American races, so we could keep up with this plan.

“Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed helped a little bit – like I’m sure it helped all the other teams that could work more streamlined towards upgrading the car, rather than being busy with racing.

“But I could say overall that across Miami and Canada, we will see an entirely new MCL40.

“Again, I would like to stress that this is what I would expect of most of our competitors, so it’s not necessarily going to be a shift in the pecking order.

“It will be effectively just a check about who has been able to add more performance within the same time frame.

“We also have some performance to recover if we look at Mercedes and, to some extent, Ferrari as well.

“But we are quite happy with the development that we’ve been able to manage so hopefully we should be able to see a slightly more competitive MCL40 in Miami and then in Canada, considering that the last race was already a decent competitive performance in Japan.

“So we definitely look forward to the next races.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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