Mercedes publicly describes a staged upgrade pipeline: screen ideas with simulation, validate selected concepts, manufacture approved parts, then check their behaviour against track data and driver feedback. McLaren’s public accounts put more emphasis on coordinating design, production and delivery, while Formula 1’s 2024 season review compares when teams brought updates and how they performed. Those accounts reveal different parts of development—not a like-for-like audit that proves one team has a better engineering process.
How Mercedes describes its upgrade pipeline
Mercedes distinguishes aerodynamic development—external bodywork and downforce-producing surfaces—from chassis development, which includes suspension, steering, cooling and brakes. Those areas interact: an aerodynamic change can affect other parts of the car, so the best local gain may require a broader vehicle compromise. Mercedes also identifies time and cost-cap limits as constraints on what it can pursue.
From candidate idea to manufactured part
The aerodynamic process begins with a broad pool of ideas. Mercedes says candidates are screened using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and a smaller selection proceeds to wind-tunnel models. Promising solutions may then be assessed in a driver-in-the-loop simulator before approved surfaces move into design and manufacturing. The team describes this as a funnel: many concepts do not reach the track. Mercedes’ account of the development stages and its general explanation of how teams develop a car provide the detail.
For composite parts, the work can include making patterns and moulds, laminating material, curing it in an autoclave, machining, inspection, assembly and final sign-off. Mercedes says larger packages can take many months, which helps explain why a visible race-weekend change is only the end of a much longer selection and production process.
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Track validation and driver feedback
Arrival at a Grand Prix does not finish the process. Mercedes says engineers compare sensor data in real time, check whether a part behaves as predicted, examine characteristics at different corners and compare track results with wind-tunnel data. Drivers add feedback about changes in handling and where around a lap they appear. Larger packages can be harder to assess over one weekend, so results from earlier races provide comparison points. This closes the loop between simulation, testing and the car’s behaviour on track.
Mercedes’ general explainer discusses some rules and testing restrictions in the context of 2021. Those historical details should not be read as a description of the current regulations; the useful enduring point is that only selected concepts make it through the development funnel.
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What the public comparison shows
The available accounts differ in scope. Mercedes explains its own technical pipeline; McLaren has described operational choices and organizational roles; Formula 1 has reported upgrade timing and season outcomes from outside the teams. The table separates those kinds of evidence rather than treating them as equivalent measures.
| Evidence | What it shows | What it does not establish |
|---|---|---|
| Mercedes first-party accounts | Idea screening, simulation and wind-tunnel validation, possible simulator work, manufacturing, and on-track correlation with data and driver feedback. | How every rival runs the same stages, or whether Mercedes is more efficient or successful internally. |
| McLaren first-party accounts | Project planning, manufacturing and logistics coordination; staged delivery in one 2022 case; differentiated technical and operational responsibilities; and competing current-car and future-car work. | That Mercedes lacks similar roles or uses a less effective system. |
| Formula 1’s 2024 season review | Publicly observed differences in when updates arrived and what happened on track during that season. | The factories’ internal methods or proof that a particular process caused a result. |
McLaren’s emphasis: managing delivery and risk
A 2022 update delivered in stages
McLaren’s account of an MCL36 update describes a project organized around defining scope, planning delivery, and checking that the expected performance step justified the cost and work. Project management had to coordinate quality, manufacturing, build, testing and logistics. As Executive Director, Operations Piers Thynne put it: “At the start of a project like this, we first try to understand the scope in detail.” That is McLaren’s description of a particular project, not a universal statement about every team or update. McLaren’s account of delivering the MCL36 upgrade describes the project.
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The team introduced related updates on different cars at Singapore and Japan. McLaren said the decision reduced the risk of sending parts by air to flyaway events, compared with moving them by truck between European races. The case makes the practical trade-off clear: even a part judged worthwhile must be manufactured, tested and delivered in a way that fits the calendar and the team’s tolerance for logistics risk. McLaren also said the package was intended to help the current season and inform the next car.
Technical roles and work across regulation cycles
In a 2025 account of its technical leadership, McLaren described distinct responsibilities for chief design, engineering, performance and operations roles. It also said it had to allocate people between the MCL39 and early work for the major 2026 rules change. This shows how McLaren publicly described its structure and competing workstreams; it is not evidence that other teams do not organize work in comparable ways. McLaren’s interview on the MCL39 and 2026 planning covers that account.
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What the 2024 upgrade race revealed—and did not
Formula 1’s season review reported that McLaren’s first cited update arrived in Miami, Ferrari fitted an update at Imola, and Mercedes took longer to begin developing its season package but made substantial gains later. It also reported that Mercedes won three of the final four Grands Prix before the summer break. The same review said Aston Martin fell back after an update did not deliver the hoped-for effect, while Red Bull appeared to have difficulty extracting further performance from the RB20. Formula 1’s 2024 review of the development battle is a season-specific account of timing and observed results.
These results show that leading teams followed different visible development schedules and that their packages had different track outcomes in 2024. They do not explain what happened inside each factory, isolate the effect of an upgrade from other factors, or measure development efficiency. A win count is an outcome, not proof that one team’s process is inherently superior.
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How McLaren described its 2026 development challenge
McLaren’s accounts of the new regulation cycle illustrate pressures that can shape early development, but they are the team’s own explanation. In an April 2026 interview, Team Principal Andrea Stella said the MCL40’s design phase reflected McLaren’s continued 2025 title fight and a deliberate decision to make the launch car a healthy platform for later development. He also cited delays in learning to exploit the power unit and reliability problems as factors that affected results and the speed of learning. Stella’s interview on developing the MCL40 sets out that account.
Technical Director Neil Houldey later said other teams may have started 2026 work earlier, leaving McLaren with ground to make up. He identified the front wing, rear wing, floor and bodywork as aerodynamic development priorities and said McLaren had found performance in those areas. That is McLaren’s assessment of its own position, not a verified comparison of every team’s starting point. Houldey’s account of the MCL40’s season evolution explains the team’s view.
Where the evidence stops
Mercedes provides unusually direct public detail about its own development stages, while the McLaren accounts illuminate project operations, organizational roles and regulation-transition planning. Formula 1’s 2024 review adds an external view of update timing and results. Together, they support a comparison of disclosed emphases and selected outcomes—not a complete comparison of engineering departments.
The available material does not establish a full internal workflow for Red Bull, Ferrari or other rivals, and it gives no controlled team-to-team figures for development efficiency, cost per lap gained or upgrade success rate. Without those measures, neither a late-arriving package nor a disappointing result can by itself diagnose the quality of a team’s underlying process.
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