McLaren Brings Austin Upgrades as Red Bull Closes to Seven Points
McLaren will introduce braking changes and test a revised floor at the United States Grand Prix as its fight with Red Bull for third in the Constructors’ Championship reaches a critical stage.
The defending champions arrive in Austin with 339 points, only seven ahead of Red Bull with six rounds remaining. That gap looked far more comfortable before the recent Azerbaijan, Bahrain and Singapore triple-header, when McLaren scored 33 points compared with Red Bull’s 102.
McLaren isn’t describing its Austin package as a major overhaul. Chief Technical Officer Rob Marshall called it a “modest selection of upgrades” intended to address braking reliability and performance, along with “small floor changes to test.”
The timing still makes those changes important.
Circuit of the Americas places heavy demands on both the car and driver. Its fast direction changes, aggressive curbs and major braking zones can expose weaknesses in balance, reliability and confidence. McLaren believes the track should be a better match for the MCL40 than the circuits it faced during the previous three rounds.
“The last few races have not been great for us,” Marshall acknowledged, adding that “Austin is probably a better circuit for our car.”
Friday practice will give McLaren its first opportunity to determine whether the changes behave on track as expected from its simulations and wind-tunnel work. With three full practice sessions scheduled, the team will have more time than it would during a Sprint weekend to evaluate the revised components and adjust the car.
The work also has implications beyond the six remaining races.
Formula 1’s regulations will change again in 2027, but those revisions are expected to be considerably smaller than the reset introduced this season. Marshall said many of the MCL40’s components and design principles remain relevant to the direction McLaren will take with next year’s car.
That means every comparison between the simulator, wind tunnel and racetrack can help McLaren improve the tools being used to develop its 2027 challenger, even when a specific component does not carry over.
The immediate concern, however, is Red Bull.
McLaren has struggled to extract consistent performance from its car while Red Bull has won the last two Grands Prix and erased most of the gap between the teams. A swing of only eight points in Austin would move Red Bull ahead in the championship.
McLaren’s Austin package may be modest, but the test awaiting it is not. The team needs the changes to deliver dependable performance immediately, while also producing useful answers for the car that follows.
