2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[SilviuAgo]

McLaren’s Engineering Technical Director Neil Houldey: “If we had continued to develop in 2025, we would have certainly gone into 2026 slower than we’re going to."

The team reached a critical juncture where their upgrades were yielding only marginal gains. “We were looking for milliseconds; 30 milliseconds was a good upgrade at that point,” Houldley explained.

However, as rivals like Red Bull capitalized on their continuous development, the implications of McLaren’s decision are being put to the test. Houldley remains optimistic, asserting that their strategy will ultimately pay off, saying, “I still think we’ve made the right decision, and when we get to 2026, hopefully, that will be proved.”

[bauc]

McLaren’s Engineering Technical Director Neil Houldey: “If we had continued to develop in 2025, we would have certainly gone into 2026 slower than we’re going to."

The team reached a critical juncture where their upgrades were yielding only marginal gains. “We were looking for milliseconds; 30 milliseconds was a good upgrade at that point,” Houldley explained.

However, as rivals like Red Bull capitalized on their continuous development, the implications of McLaren’s decision are being put to the test. Houldley remains optimistic, asserting that their strategy will ultimately pay off, saying, “I still think we’ve made the right decision, and when we get to 2026, hopefully, that will be proved.”

If they have a car ready to run on the private test in 10 days, we have nothing to be afraid of.

[Def]

[ScottR267]

Engine fired up

[CjC]

I suppose K-Swiss was another casualty of this Puma deal

[koolway]

Engine fired up

Good to hear
Just wondering, what's that tailpipe enclosure ?

[haza]

came across a video online regarding a rumour about McLaren (so take it with a pinch of salt) apparently a draft fia document circulated amongst technical delegates in late November it referenced an anomalous thermal consistency observed during closed dyno sessions involving a Mercedes customer team rumoured to be McLaren the engine was rumoured to be producing deployment at full capacity for the full lap without thermal degradation (which shouldn’t be possible with the removal of mgu h) using a software that adjust the batteries discharge curve based on temperature readings on a cellular level (predictive torque response) sounds like rubbish to me I have no idea how true this is or if it’s just made up nonsense hopefully someone on here with better knowledge than me can clarify better

[Def]

[genarro]

came across a video online regarding a rumour about McLaren (so take it with a pinch of salt) apparently a draft fia document circulated amongst technical delegates in late November it referenced an anomalous thermal consistency observed during closed dyno sessions involving a Mercedes customer team rumoured to be McLaren the engine was rumoured to be producing deployment at full capacity for the full lap without thermal degradation (which shouldn’t be possible with the removal of mgu h) using a software that adjust the batteries discharge curve based on temperature readings on a cellular level (predictive torque response) sounds like rubbish to me I have no idea how true this is or if it’s just made up nonsense hopefully someone on here with better knowledge than me can clarify better

Well we can hope that they made some witchcraft

[LionsHeart]

came across a video online regarding a rumour about McLaren (so take it with a pinch of salt) apparently a draft fia document circulated amongst technical delegates in late November it referenced an anomalous thermal consistency observed during closed dyno sessions involving a Mercedes customer team rumoured to be McLaren the engine was rumoured to be producing deployment at full capacity for the full lap without thermal degradation (which shouldn’t be possible with the removal of mgu h) using a software that adjust the batteries discharge curve based on temperature readings on a cellular level (predictive torque response) sounds like rubbish to me I have no idea how true this is or if it’s just made up nonsense hopefully someone on here with better knowledge than me can clarify better

I don't know what to say. In theory, it's doable, but on the other hand, what will the power output be mid-lap? And what will it be at the end of the lap? How effective is this in terms of lap times? After all, if we're not talking about qualifying, but say, 56 laps, it seems very unrealistic. Perhaps the plan here is to improve cooling?

[Emag]

I came across some presumably leaked team kit images and they were orange with a big chunk of black in the middle. It doesn't seem like they are moving away from this scheme.
In my subjective view, the MCL39 is the worst looking double-title car I have seen. The livery just doesn't look good. Too much black to the point that it looks like the orange was used just to break up the black in some arbitrarily defined sharp lines. When viewed from the side or the top in particular it just doesn't look good. And hell, it's not even the right shade of orange.

MCL33 and MCL34 in particular were very well designed. They looked amazing. Too bad one of them was an absolute tractor and the other was just a solid midfielder, but even with the cars being what they were, at least they looked nice.
If they keep the same ratio of orange but swap the blue with black, it could still look good, if they have to have the black.

But with what they have done since 2022, they have gone back to what they were doing with the MCL32. The first "return to orange", which looked horrible. Who is approving these designs

Edit: To give some perspective how dominant the black is on the sideview. The bottom image was generated by ChatGPT with the prompt telling it to simply paint over the whole thing with a vibrant orange.

[Badger]

came across a video online regarding a rumour about McLaren (so take it with a pinch of salt) apparently a draft fia document circulated amongst technical delegates in late November it referenced an anomalous thermal consistency observed during closed dyno sessions involving a Mercedes customer team rumoured to be McLaren the engine was rumoured to be producing deployment at full capacity for the full lap without thermal degradation (which shouldn’t be possible with the removal of mgu h) using a software that adjust the batteries discharge curve based on temperature readings on a cellular level (predictive torque response) sounds like rubbish to me I have no idea how true this is or if it’s just made up nonsense hopefully someone on here with better knowledge than me can clarify better

Dismiss it. That's a Mercedes part and they control its operation, any trickery here would be Mercedes trickery. Also why would McLaren have an engine on a dyno in November? I'm fairly sure HPP doesn't hand over their engine mid development for McLaren to play around with on a dyno, they get the finished product. And the technical details of this rumour sound like BS.

[mwillems]

I can understand why Mclaren would do their own tests of the engine. I dont think the FIA would visit customer teams for engine tests?

Also this suggests that there will be issues deploying energy from the battery over the course of a race, due to temps which would not be a good look for F1 and given the engine reg scaremongering from teams, we would already have heard about this.

Sounds like nonsense for these reasons and the reasons already stated by others.

[AR3-GP]

It sounds like ai generated slop .

anomalous thermal consistency

[the EDGE]

That is not a good look