McLaren will introduce further upgrades at the United States Grand Prix as they bid to improve their car's performance and stave off a resurgent Red Bull in the standings over the remainder of the season. The reigning world champions continue to sit third in the Constructors' Championship with six rounds to go but fell into the clutches of fourth-placed Red Bull over the first of the end-of-season triple headers. While McLaren failed to score a podium across that run of races, Red Bull claimed four top-three finishes - including two wins for Max Verstappen - to cut what had been a 76-point deficit to their rivals to just seven points.
McLaren's official pre-Austin preview described the team's results over the last three events as falling "significantly short of expectations" and that their 33-point haul in that run was "significantly lower than anticipated". McLaren now head to a Circuit of the Americas track in Austin this weekend that they are hoping will be more suited to the strengths of their car, which will be boosted by some further revisions. Rob Marshall, McLaren's chief technical officer, said: "We're bringing a modest selection of upgrades for this event, aimed at improving some braking reliability and performance issues.
We also have some small floor changes to test. "We have all seen how difficult it is to predict the relative performance of the top teams over the last five or six races. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player "Obviously, there are many factors in play here: cars being upgraded, cars suiting and drivers liking certain circuits among other factors.
The last few races have not been great for us, but I think we're getting stronger again and Austin is probably a better circuit for our car. "Practice will be important for correlating what we've seen in our development tools with the track. "We are still learning how best to extract performance from this car.
We have the full range of corner types here so getting the best balance for the whole lap will be our main focus." McLaren's cause in Singapore was not helped by them losing eight points on the final lap of the Sprint when their cars collided after Lando Norris attempted an overtake on Oscar Piastri. Norris later apologised for the accident, admitting it was ill-advised move on his team-mate at such a late stage of the short-form race. The world champion said in the team's Austin preview that "I take responsibility for my mistakes, and I learn from them".
McLaren now return to the scene of a previous high-profile incident in Austin from 2025, when both their drivers crashed out on the first lap of the Sprint in a chain reaction set off by Piastri colliding with Nico Hulkenberg, and have little room for any similar missed opportunities 12 months on. Speaking on the post-Singapore GP edition of The F1 Show podcast, Sky Sports F1's Bernie Collins said: "McLaren have had a few incidents through the year where they have not maximised their points. "[In Singapore] Max Verstappen maximised the result, McLaren did not and there have been several weekends where McLaren did not maximise the result.
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