McLaren will have ‘completely new’ car for Miami Grand Prix

LONDON – Constructors’ champions McLaren will have a “completely new car” when Formula One returns from a five-week break at the Miami Grand Prix in May, according to team principal Andrea Stella.

Mercedes, who provide McLaren’s engines, have won all three races so far this season but the last race in Japan was closer between the two teams.

Australian Oscar Piastri ended up second to Mercedes’ young Italian Kimi Antonelli at Suzuka and might have won but for a safety-car period helping his rival.

“There was always the idea to deliver a completely new car, especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view, for the North American races,” Stella told reporters at the team’s factory.

“We could keep up with this plan. Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed sort of 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.”

There have been no F1 races in April because the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian grands prix were called off due to the Middle East war and its impact on the Gulf region.

That means the race in Miami will be the fourth of the season rather than the sixth.

“Across Miami and Canada we will see an entirely new MCL40 (car)... 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 who has been able to add more performance within the same timeframe,” added Stella.

His team are third in the standings, 89 points behind Mercedes who had one-two finishes in the first two races.

McLaren, constructors’ champions for the past two years and winners of the drivers’ title in 2025 with Lando Norris, are more limited than others on wind-tunnel use and computational fluid dynamics (CFD), because each team’s allocation is linked to where they finish each season.

However, chief designer Rob Marshall told reporters that was not the big disadvantage it appeared to be.

“If you’re bright and you approach it the right way and you think about stuff methodically... you just don’t bother doing the stuff that wasn’t worth doing and you carry on doing the stuff at the top of the list,” he said.

Meanwhile, drivers will get an extra half an hour of practice in Miami next week after the cancellation of races in the Middle East and recent rule changes, F1 governing body FIA said on April 23.

Tweaks to technical rules have been made during the break to address concerns from the first three races over driver safety and racing.

The FIA said that, after consultation with all stakeholders, the hour-long practice session on May 1 will be increased to 90 minutes.

Separately, McLaren chief executive officer Zak Brown said that he would welcome the return of F1 rival Christian Horner and he would be “shocked” if it does not happen.

Horner, who was fired by Red Bull in July 2025, is part of a group attempting to purchase investment firm Otro Capital’s 24 per cent stake in Alpine’s F1 team.

“I think Christian was a great personality for the sport,” Brown said at a media session hosted by McLaren this week, per ESPN.

“Sport always has great personalities. They come and go. I think it’d be great to have Christian back in the sport.

“He’s a great operator. His track record speaks for itself. I’d rather have 10 weak team principals, but that’s not going to happen any time soon. I think it’d be great to have him back in the sport.”

In other news, Turkey’s Istanbul Park circuit will return to the F1 calendar from 2027 for at least five years, the Turkish presidency said on April 24.

The circuit on the Asian side of the city is popular with the drivers and fans, but last hosted a race in 2021 as a stand-in during the Covid-19 pandemic. REUTERS