MEXICO CITY — McLaren would have “heavily compromised” the development of its 2026 car had it attempted to match Red Bull’s frequency of upgrades this season, team principal Andrea Stella said.
Red Bull’s late-season development push has propelled Max Verstappen back into the championship fight, with the defending champion now just 40 points off McLaren’s Oscar Piastri at the top of the drivers’ standings.
All teams have faced a difficult balance between committing resources to a set of new regulations in 2026 and continuing to improve their 2025 cars this year.
McLaren has not introduced a major upgrade since the British Grand Prix in July, while Red Bull has found performance gains thanks to a stream of steady upgrades from September’s Italian Grand Prix onwards.
Ahead of this weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix, Red Bull has brought a further aerodynamic tweak to the floor of its car as well as improved cooling to deal with the demands of racing at high altitude in Mexico City.
Stella said McLaren turned off the development of its car earlier than Red Bull because any significant gain for 2025 would have resulted in an unpalatable cost for 2026 development.
“The 2026 project would be heavily compromised,” Stella said when asked whether McLaren could have matched Red Bull for upgrades.
“We want to win championships in the future. To win championships in the future you need to have a competitive car. I think we have been very considerate in the timing of switching our full resources to 2026.
“We also have to make a technical point here. Our car from an aerodynamic point of view was already quite mature and to add one point of aerodynamic efficiency, like we have added more than one point when we upgraded our car around Austria, Canada and so on, would take weeks for us because we were at a plateau in our aerodynamic development.
“With the 2026 car every week we add a lot of downforce. So that’s where, with the best information you have available, you have to make a call. We also don’t have to forget that by being the champions we are the most restricted by the regulations in terms of the wind tunnel allowance and the CFD allowance.
“We were so much in the diminishing returns we needed to be realistic and shift our attention to 2026.”
Stella believes Red Bull’s focus on 2025 makes more sense as his rivals have been working on correcting issues with its car which were not understood at the start of the season. He also alluded to Red Bull having bigger problems with its 2026 car after committing to building its own engines under the next set of regulations.
“Also I think that when we look at Red Bull and when we consider some of the complaints they had at the start of the season perhaps they had more margin to develop efficiently focusing on 2025.
“Then it’s easier to find lap time because you are effectively fixing something rather than trying to improve something that already works well.
“I think it’s much easier to develop when you have some specific problems and I think for instance for Red Bull they talked at times of struggling to rebalance with the front wing when they were using big rear wings.
“Perhaps they are happier to give up a little bit of the 2026 because they might have some other issues for 2026 whereby they say let’s focus on 2025.”
Speaking about Red Bull’s upgrades in Mexico, chief engineer Paul Monaghan said the team had seen performance potential in updating existing parts and would not be drawn on whether they would be a sacrifice for next year.
“The 2026 project, about this time next year, we’ll get an honest answer, won’t we?” Monaghan said. “We have taken the choice, and it’s a make-from, so it’s a previous floor that we’ve managed to recycle because it was sufficiently modular to get it here.
“The redistribution of cooling exits was found when we went through the last iteration of the top body, and we thought, oh, we missed that one. We could get in here, though, and some magical work in Milton Keynes, and it’s here.
“So all credit to everybody that got that done. You’re absolutely right, we’re in the midst of 26′, yet we’ve managed to do that for here. So if we enjoy the benefits of it, then it’s all well and good.”
