2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[Mansell89]

Have to say having listened to Rob Marshall’s interview, the way he simply played down Barcelona as an extended shakedown and that no dialling in work has been done, it tells us that Bahrain is where all the key data is.

Mercedes we know will be a very strong competitor but do you remember back in 2022 when the Barcelona shakedown testing made McLaren look like a possible threat, only to get to Bahrain and get it absolutely handed to us, well beaten.

[Emag]

I mean, it's safe to say Mercedes look like the most prepared team out of this test. What happens to the rest, tough to gauge, but truth be told, McLaren were "late" to this shakedown. At least they managed to get the full 3 days in, unlike Aston Martin, so they can go into the official test at Bahrain little bit more prepared.
I still think it's too early to make performance calls, so I will refrain from making any pecking order predictions. However, if someone has Mercedes 1st in their bingo book, I won't disagree with them either.

McLaren's car is not following Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston and RedBull in some "trends" they seem like they all to fall to. So it would be interesting to see how they compare, pace-wise, to all of them.

[SmallSoldier]

The more I look at the MCL40, the more I like it… Hopefully the stopwatch matches the looks!

It’s interesting too how bias works, reading a few in here the MCL40 is bland and uninspired, but apparently the AMR is ground breaking (maybe because Newey’s name is attached to it)… while it’s hard to find a lot of original ideas in the Aston (the rear suspension blowing people’s minds carries the same concept as the RB16B, the underbite in the sidepods is also an old RB concept, the Ferrari horns, downwash sidepods, , the MCL40 seems to be doing it’s own thing in more than one area…. Time will tell, happy to have cars on track

[Darth-Piekus]

I agree. A lot of doom and gloom because of a single fuel system failure and too many premature assumption from Mercedes chasing glory runs.

[mwillems]

I think anyone making any predictions at this point would plucking straws. No baseline times, no.idea of engine capability, no idea which concept works best.

We don't need Rob Marshall to tell us this is just a shakedown, there is so much time to test this year that unless you have fundamental problems, everyone should have no issues getting their program in and can take their time to maximise their learning. There is only so much that lap count can bring you and at this shakedown laptimes are even more irrelevant than a normal test.

Once we start getting to see race sim lap times from offocial feeds then we might get a better idea, but as of today, I do not see how anyone can make any other predictions, other than we are simply looking like we'll not be breaking down

Agree with SmallSoldier, I love the way this car looks. It doesn't look plain to me (it has it's own design), it's very pretty (Which does have a habit of counting for something in aero terms) and it passes the CFD eye test lol

Wether conceptually this is the right direction, who knows.

[Darth-Piekus]

Such a pity though that we can't see any live this week so we can see for ourselves details of the testing program.

[mwillems]

You'd still learn almost nothing that would give you a pecking order at the top.

[Darth-Piekus]

I know but for the sake of seeing the car ourselves and not still pictures. Any news from today if Mclaren is out early to compensate for yesterday?

[Seerix]

Bearman, Bottas, Bortoleto, Gasly, Verstappen and Leclerc are already on the track
@SoyMotor

edit: Oscar is out as well

[Darth-Piekus]

Do we know if they are trying long race stints since they aren't chasing times?

[Motörhead]

Do we know if they are trying long race stints since they aren't chasing times?

Piastri: 1'17''446 - 32 laps (Soymotor)

[Darth-Piekus]

And the rest? Nevermind. I opened Soymotor also and checking.

[FittingMechanics]

11:15 Lap count and times:

Piastri: 1'17''446 - 32 laps.
Verstappen: 1'18''552 - 46 laps.
Leclerc: 1'18''9 - 36 laps.
Bearman: 1'19''0 - 54 laps
Gasly: ​​1'19''7 - 28 laps.
Bortoleto: 1'22'2 - 11 laps.
Bottas: 1'22'7 - 26 laps.
Alonso: 1'22'8 - 16 laps.

No details about tyres or stint lengths.

[Darth-Piekus]

Piastri did a 1.18.2 before on medium before. Not sure if they are using the same still. Piastri came out immediately from what I saw at 9:05 and till 11:15 he has had 32 laps so my opinion is that it might be short stints and lots of set up changes. If Oscar was doing race runs he should have had over 50 or 60 laps by now.

I'm also not sure if tyres this year have huge differences in each type.

[FittingMechanics]

End of morning session, good amount of laps by Piastri.

Leclerc: 1:16.653 (79 laps)
Piastri: 1:17.446 (79 laps)
Verstappen: 1:18.285 (69 laps)
Bearman: 1:18.423 (105 laps)
Gasly: ​​1:19.754 (78 laps)
Bortoleto: 1:20.179 (64 laps)
Alonso: 1:20.795 (49 laps)
Bottas: 1:22.790 (33 laps)