McLaren adds Mercedes engine, rear wing at Spa

McLaren will give Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri Mercedes’ latest power unit specification for the first time at the Belgian Grand Prix, alongside a new rear wing, but the team is presenting both changes as a reliability and fine-tuning step rather than a leap in performance.

Spa marks the point at which McLaren finally joins the rest of Mercedes High Performance Powertrains’ customer group on the updated engine. McLaren had been the only one of the four teams still waiting, after Alpine and Williams introduced it before Silverstone and Mercedes began using it in Austria following race-ending failures for George Russell in Canada and Kimi Antonelli in Barcelona.

The new engine is understood to be focused on reliability rather than outright power. That matters for McLaren too, given its own power-unit-related issues this season. Norris had a battery problem in Monaco, while both McLarens failed to start in China after glitches shortly before the race, with Piastri’s car wheeled off the grid.

Neither driver will take a grid penalty at Spa. Norris and Piastri are each moving onto their third internal combustion engine of the season, with four permitted before penalties apply.

McLaren had already faced questions over why it had delayed the switch. Team principal Andrea Stella said at Silverstone that Alpine and Williams were more “in need” of the new engine at that stage, while chief executive Zak Brown said McLaren’s engine-use cycle did not justify taking it earlier.

The rear-wing update has also been a long time coming. McLaren took the part to Austria but chose not to run it because of concerns, and will now evaluate the new assembly during practice at Spa.

Neil Houldley, McLaren’s applied engineering technical director, said the team had leaned heavily on simulation work before what it expects to be a difficult weekend. “Our preparation has been thorough, using extensive simulation work to get ahead of what we know will be a very demanding weekend for energy management,” he said.

Houldley said the team was bringing “a new rear wing assembly” that had been in its development pipeline, but cautioned against expecting a sharp change in form after Silverstone. “We’re confident that this update will add a bit of performance to our car, but we are fully aware that after a difficult British Grand Prix, mainly in terms of pure performance, even this round won’t be that easy, so we won’t be expecting any big change in terms of competitiveness.”

That leaves McLaren heading into Spa with fresh hardware on both the power-unit and aerodynamic sides, but with the bigger objective centered on getting through one of the calendar’s most energy-starved events more cleanly rather than expecting the upgrades alone to transform its competitive picture.