2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[Emag]

This is from Bahrain test last year :

Even when a test is considered "successful" by McLaren's standards, they're not near the top of total lap counts. Mercedes on the other hand is a team that traditionally runs a lot of mileage in testing.

Unless McLarens are breaking down on track or are unable to complete long(ish), then a lower lap count than Mercedes is not an ill sign in itself.

They do tend to spend a lot of time in the garage though.

[De Wet]

https://www.facebook.com/reel/2360481061040943


Track action

[Emag]

First signs of potential issues. It made sense yesterday, as the car hadn't run at all before. It doesn't make sense today to hit the track 3 hours in of a 4 hour session.

[Darth-Piekus]

No need to doom and gloom. They are doing tests.

[Balalu]

That's odd. Sky said Piastri improved his time @ 15:40

[Emag]

That's odd. Sky said Piastri improved his time @ 15:40

Sky is very late on their updates. They had an old laptime from the morning session which Oscar improved between 12:00 and 13:00.

Nobody has reported seeing McLaren on track on the afternoon.

[FittingMechanics]

These Spanish journalists are on a hill kilometers away with security coming to visit them. It's quite likely they miss a lot of the action, especially when there are quite a few black cars.

[LionsHeart]

First signs of potential issues. It made sense yesterday, as the car hadn't run at all before. It doesn't make sense today to hit the track 3 hours in of a 4 hour session.

Perhaps they're drinking English tea. Just kidding, of course. But if the car doesn't stop right on the track, that's not necessarily a reason to despair. Although, yes, it could potentially indicate something. Or perhaps the team changed some parts to see the difference. However, it's not logical to do something like that on the second day of testing.

Regardless, these are tests. It's better that problems and errors arise now than later. I don't rule out the possibility that there could have been problems with the power unit.

[Seerix]

You think they measure laptimes on stopwatch? They have access to local livetiming on track. It's not about missing the car visually.
Let's see the evening reports/summary. I am curious. Losing half a day would certainly be suboptimal no matter how you look at it.

[FittingMechanics]

You think they measure laptimes on stopwatch? They have access to local livetiming on track. It's not about missing the car visually.
Let's see the evening reports/summary. I am curious. Losing half a day would certainly be suboptimal no matter how you look at it.

They are not on track. My assumption is that they have someone on the inside who feeds them info periodically.

[Seerix]

I see some fuel system issues reported online, but random twitter accounts, hard to confirm if correct.

Edit:
well, 48 laps it is.

[FittingMechanics]

I see some fuel system issues reported online, but random twitter accounts, hard to confirm if correct.

Sky reporting that Oscar confirmed it.

Looks like no running in the afternoon. A shame, but at least there are 7 more days of testing. Plenty of time.

A positive for me is that it looks like the baseline is good.

[Luscion]

[AR3-GP]

“We've gone out, we've got a good understanding of where the car is from a baseline point of view, but obviously we've had some issues,” Temple said.

“We've not been able to do all the running that we would like.

“We discovered a fuel system problem and the car's very complex so we decided to bring it back into the garage, strip it down fully, understand where the problem is coming from.”

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mcla ... -high-bar/

[bauc]