McLaren likely won’t upgrade 2026 F1 car before March

“The car everyone will see in Barcelona won’t be the car that races in Australia. I think that will be across the board, because it's simply too early.”

A few days ago, Haas team principal Ayao Komatsu was confident all Formula 1 cars would evolve significantly by the Australian Grand Prix – but McLaren differs.

The team won’t officially launch its MCL40 until 9 February, long after its first running in the Barcelona pre-season test. The opening track action is taking place from 26-30 January with three days per team; McLaren is opting to miss at least the first one.

Nevertheless, the reigning world champions have already held a media roundtable about their new challenger, and the 2026 technical regulations overhauling chassis and engine design. The squad’s technical chiefs have made it clear that they want to focus on understanding their new concept in pre-season testing and the first grand prix, rather than updating it straight away – though they will also keep a close eye on the competition.

“Between Barcelona and Melbourne, I think what you see is probably pretty much what we'll bring to the first race,” chief designer Rob Marshall said. “A lot of our effort will be into understanding this.

“Also, we need to take into account what the opposition are up to. We need to be inspired by what they may or may not achieve and may or may not show us.

Jonathan Wheatley, Team Manager, Red Bull Racing, Rob Marshall, Chief Designer, McLaren F1 Team, David Coulthard, Presenter

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“We really are going to have to be very focused on getting our heads around this car. It's very complicated. It's all new. There's a lot of stuff that we need to dial in and tune in.

“So, I think bringing a lot of new stuff to it early doors would complicate stuff. I think we're better off understanding our platform before we get too keen on redesigning it before it's turned a wheel, if you see what I mean.”

There’s also a level of uncertainty, within the Woking-based squad, as to whether the so-far-efficient correlation between its simulator and track running will remain amid the new rule set.

“In terms of whether or not the aerodynamic packages will translate directly from our tools to delivering on track, of course we hope they will,” Mark Temple, technical director in charge of performance, added.

“But there are some aspects of the new regulations that make the aerodynamics more complicated and, I'm not sure if ‘unpredictable’ is the word, but let's say harder to kind of predict on track.

“Part of that is because we're still relatively early in the reg cycle, so until we go on track and we see, ‘Okay, where are the deficiencies between what we predict in our tools and what we observe on track?’, it's hard to have confidence.

“But of course, a big part of the process in Formula 1 and why I think we're all quite excited to get on track is because, finally, we can see where those gaps are, get some certainty around the things that maybe are known unknowns at the moment, and then figure out how we incorporate that into our development and our process going forward.”