Will Mercedes or McLaren land the next punch at F1's Canadian GP?

Both frontrunning Formula 1 teams are bringing upgrades to Montreal, as Mercedes aims to protect its early 2026 lead

Three weeks on from Miami's upgrade bonanza, the 2026 Formula 1 season is set for another twist as Mercedes and McLaren both bring a big package to the Canadian Grand Prix.

There has been little doubt over who the dominant force is at the dawn of the 2026 rules era, with Mercedes sweeping the first four races from pole. Sophomore driver Kimi Antonelli heads to Canada as the championship leader after completing a hat-trick of grand prix wins in Miami, leading team-mate George Russell by 20 points.

Looking a little bit deeper, though, shows no two Mercedes wins really look the same. From early dominance out of the gates in Australia, the competition has gradually been reducing the deficit. While Ferrari initially looked like Mercedes' strongest challenger, McLaren has surged in recent weeks as it got on top of its Mercedes power unit. Both teams then brought a large upgrade package to Miami, which seems to have had a bigger impact on the reigning world champion outfit than on the Maranello squad.

McLaren's Miami form was somewhat deceptive as Norris beat Antonelli to sprint pole on Friday before he and team-mate Oscar Piastri went on to record a 1-2 win in Saturday morning's 19-lap sprint. However, another pass at dialling car set-up and power unit deployment parameters showed Mercedes was still pound-for-pound the best car across grand prix qualifying and the race.

Why Canada will be the next battleground for early 2026 car upgrades

Mercedes' gap may have shrunk, but the biggest takeaway for the Silver Arrows is that it has managed to weather a first round of improvements from its direct rivals while still waiting for its own significant upgrade push. Mercedes has consciously kept its package back for the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve round this week, with it hoping to restore a more comfortable lead. If Miami's regression was calculated, then the fact Antonelli still won the race could be seen as an ominous sign of things to come.

Having said that, Mercedes' struggles in its troubled ground-effect era to correlate upgrades have made its F1 chief Toto Wolff somewhat cautious.

"Yes, something is coming, or rather the bigger update will come in Canada," he said. "Now we have to make sure it actually works. On paper it’s easy to say you’re three or four tenths faster. But it has to show on track and on the stopwatch."

McLaren isn't done yet either, having decided to split its upgrades across Miami and Montreal. It's not quite an even split, as Autosport understands the Woking squad deployed around 60% of its upgrades in Florida with another 40% coming this week, centred around a new front wing. Given the importance of a front wing on the entire aero performance, it could still be a powerful weapon as McLaren aims to improve its aerodynamic efficiency, which is particularly key on Montreal's many straights.

McLaren's general upwards form curve over the past four weekends, which is also down to cleaner race weekend execution and getting a handle on its complex customer engines, has been a cause for optimism, and the effectiveness of part one of its upgrade package has handed the papaya squad another boost.

"We feel extremely satisfied with the weekend, very encouraged, not only because in a single weekend we scored more points than the three previous races, but also because of the trend that we have established," McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said. "We know that we have some more upgrades coming, which are kind of coming from the same group, so we are optimistic that they may allow us to take some further steps forward.

"I think Mercedes still possess a couple of tenths advantage on anybody else. This was the most noticeable today in the race and [in grand prix qualifying]. I think in the first sprint section of the weekend, for some reason Mercedes didn't express its full potential.

"So, I think Mercedes is still the best team, probably because we don't have many high speed corners here it's less noticeable than some other tracks. But I think they also did a good job of optimising what they had after having learned from the sprint qualifying and the sprint race."

What last year's Canadian Grand Prix tell us

Stella's observation of Mercedes' real strengths is an interesting one. As McLaren has largely gotten on par with the works team on power unit usage, and even did a better job in Miami sprint qualifying, it has become more and more obvious that the Mercedes W17 isn't just a one-trick pony, but a well rounded car that performs well in high-speed corners as well as in a straight line.

That would make the next two rounds, on outliers like stop-start Canada and low-speed Monaco, two difficult rounds to judge the real pecking order. As last year's edition tells us, the season's dominant car doesn't always win in Montreal, with Russell taking one of two wins on a rare weekend where Mercedes was able to compete with McLaren and Red Bull in cooler conditions, and in the absence of high-speed corners.

With the race being brought forward by three weeks this year, the prospect of cold weather is even more pertinent with temperatures as low as 14 degrees a possibility, as well as the likelihood of rain.

Add the complexity of another sprint weekend, and it may well be the case that the effectiveness of the upgrades from either side won't fully come to light until mid-June's Barcelona race.

That's precisely the beauty of the first season under a new regulation cycle, though, as by the time F1 heads to the first of two races in Spain others will undoubtedly bring more parts too. Rather than the concept of a set pecking order, the field is already compact enough to where F1 2026's relentless, rolling development cycle will cause the competitive picture to ebb and flow from circuit to circuit.

Whether or not Mercedes can really be caught remains anyone's guess. But expect the month of June to yield more answers than Canada could possibly provide.

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- The Autosport.com Team

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