2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[De Wet]

Silviu let me correct you on that one. It wasn't just Red Bull that made the engine. It was a cooperation between Red Bull and Ford because Red Bull was unable to do that by themselves as they admitted on their own site. But I agree that they are performing much better than Honda.

This is true, is RBR with Ford, not something that RBR did alone. This was also my proposal to have an experienced partner like BMW, VW etc, to start the journey and to gather experience.

One question to older McLaren fans, I saw Zak talking about Race 1000 and that being Miami. Also McLaren start to do some promo but with focus on Miami. Based on my math and also some statistics sites, race in Australia was 996 (races started by a McLaren car). So mean the famous McLaren "race 1000" will be in Saudi, not in Miami.
I know the Americans are paying a lot of money and is nice from marketing perspective to use Miami for this special celebration, livery bla bla, but is as fake as the new F1 overtake records.
Is like McLaren should have celebrate the 200 win not in Hungary but in Brazil to have also a special Senna livery tribute (to 100 win also in Brazil by Ayrton). Or Lando not to celebrate the first world title in AbuDhabi but in Silverstone '26

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HDCv7vbaIAA ... name=large

The Middle Eastern races will be cancelled.

[SilviuAgo]

Silviu let me correct you on that one. It wasn't just Red Bull that made the engine. It was a cooperation between Red Bull and Ford because Red Bull was unable to do that by themselves as they admitted on their own site. But I agree that they are performing much better than Honda.

This is true, is RBR with Ford, not something that RBR did alone. This was also my proposal to have an experienced partner like BMW, VW etc, to start the journey and to gather experience.

One question to older McLaren fans, I saw Zak talking about Race 1000 and that being Miami. Also McLaren start to do some promo but with focus on Miami. Based on my math and also some statistics sites, race in Australia was 996 (races started by a McLaren car). So mean the famous McLaren "race 1000" will be in Saudi, not in Miami.
I know the Americans are paying a lot of money and is nice from marketing perspective to use Miami for this special celebration, livery bla bla, but is as fake as the new F1 overtake records.
Is like McLaren should have celebrate the 200 win not in Hungary but in Brazil to have also a special Senna livery tribute (to 100 win also in Brazil by Ayrton). Or Lando not to celebrate the first world title in AbuDhabi but in Silverstone '26

The Middle Eastern races will be cancelled.

Heard that this is highly possible. But still Zak will not have his 1000 race in Miami. It will be in Canada.

[Jaymz]

This is true, is RBR with Ford, not something that RBR did alone. This was also my proposal to have an experienced partner like BMW, VW etc, to start the journey and to gather experience.

One question to older McLaren fans, I saw Zak talking about Race 1000 and that being Miami. Also McLaren start to do some promo but with focus on Miami. Based on my math and also some statistics sites, race in Australia was 996 (races started by a McLaren car). So mean the famous McLaren "race 1000" will be in Saudi, not in Miami.
I know the Americans are paying a lot of money and is nice from marketing perspective to use Miami for this special celebration, livery bla bla, but is as fake as the new F1 overtake records.
Is like McLaren should have celebrate the 200 win not in Hungary but in Brazil to have also a special Senna livery tribute (to 100 win also in Brazil by Ayrton). Or Lando not to celebrate the first world title in AbuDhabi but in Silverstone '26

The Middle Eastern races will be cancelled.

Heard that this is highly possible. But still Zak will not have his 1000 race in Miami. It will be in Canada.

He said it's part of the celebrations. They can celebrate their 1000th race on the 1001st or 2nd or 3rd if they think it's more suitable. Celebrations for things like birthdays don't always happen on the acual day.

[SilviuAgo]

The Middle Eastern races will be cancelled.

Heard that this is highly possible. But still Zak will not have his 1000 race in Miami. It will be in Canada.

He said it's part of the celebrations. They can celebrate their 1000th race on the 1001st or 2nd or 3rd if they think it's more suitable. Celebrations for things like birthdays don't always happen on the acual day.

I saw the interview with Zak in Australia and he clearly said that Miami will be 1000 GP for McLaren. Which is not accurate. He can celebrate whenever he wants, and for DTS fans or the guys attending a F1 race just to be seen among celebrities is ok. But for us, real McLaren fans, you can not celebrate 1000 GP 1-2 races before or after. As I said, is like celebrating 200th win when you have only 199, cause you might wait 10 years for the 200th.
I hope McLaren will celebrate not only 1000th GP but also 60 years from the first race in Formula 1. And a special white & green livery in Monaco, will be a huge tribute to Bruce McLaren and his legacy.

[AR3-GP]

I think it is saying how often the PU software can be updated. There's also an exemption where the limits only begin from the 5th round. There is opportunity for Mercedes to develop new software that further confuses the customer teams.

[AR3-GP]

Mclaren need to keep an eye on the situation with Mercedes potentially buying a stake in Alpine. That will almost certainly mean that Mclaren will need to look for a new engine partner.

As you know, Mercedes discussed dropping a customer team because it's not profitable. It's easy to understand why Mclaren would be on the chopping block if Toto buys into Alpine:

Williams has long time Toto partner in crime, James Vowles.
Alpine would be Mercedes junior team.
Mclaren -> odd man out.

If Horner buys into Alpine, then Alpine will be the team that gets dropped.

Mclaren could probably go to Audi. Mclaren-Audi seems okay.

[FittingMechanics]

Not another big team with a junior team.

[Emag]

The middle east is kinda on fire right now, otherwise I would just ask them to dump more oil money into the McLaren Group and just build their own engines.

[CjC]

Mclaren need to keep an eye on the situation with Mercedes potentially buying a stake in Alpine. That will almost certainly mean that Mclaren will need to look for a new engine partner.

As you know, Mercedes discussed dropping a customer team because it's not profitable. It's easy to understand why Mclaren would be on the chopping block if Toto buys into Alpine:

Williams has long time Toto partner in crime, James Vowles.
Alpine would be Mercedes junior team.
Mclaren -> odd man out.

If Horner buys into Alpine, then Alpine will be the team that gets dropped.

Mclaren could probably go to Audi. Mclaren-Audi seems okay.

It wouldn’t be the first time Mercedes supply an engine to a team and then buy into said team would it?…… Brawn anyone?

[AR3-GP]

It wouldn’t be the first time Mercedes supply an engine to a team and then buy into said team would it?…… Brawn anyone?

Not at all. iirc, the story was that Mercedes wanted to buy-out Mclaren but Ron Dennis said no and that's why they bought Brawn.

[CjC]

The middle east is kinda on fire right now, otherwise I would just ask them to dump more oil money into the McLaren Group and just build their own engines.

Even without the trouble in the Middle East would building their own PU be viable? RBPT have done an awesome job but they needed assistance initially from Honda and now Ford.
Merc certainly won’t sell them any IP and which other car maker not already in the sport is a realistic option?
McLarens options are incredibly limited, their most realistic option and it pains me to say it, is to piss and moan to the FIA to create a rule where not only the PU is to be run in the exact same way (or how ever the rule is written) but also all info has to be shared between the works and customer teams as to how to run it at its most optimum- which in turn could annoy the PU manufacturer who then in turn decides to leave the sport and that seems to be the LAST thing Liberty Media and the FIA want hence why we are in this current situation right now

[CjC]

It wouldn’t be the first time Mercedes supply an engine to a team and then buy into said team would it?…… Brawn anyone?

Not at all. iirc, the story was that Mercedes wanted to buy-out Mclaren but Ron Dennis said no and that's why they bought Brawn.

Thought Norbert Haug pushed the board to buy Brawn?

Even so, Merc supplied Brawn first then bought them out. I’m not suggesting Merc did anything devious back then just that if the Toto scenario plays out with Alpine it would be history repeating itself.

[SmallSoldier]

Red Bull and Mercedes went neck to neck in 2021. The WCC could have swung the other way if not for unfortunate incidents on the track. I hope you are not being intentionally disingenuous here.

I think it's actually pretty surprising really that McLaren chassis is worse than what I expected. I obviously expected them to be at least as good as Mercedes.

Granted, there could be a much bigger snowball effect here because of Mercedes playing games with their customers.

McLaren had the constructors done by race 10 last year and had shifted all resources to 2026 by their own admission as they wanted to "keep winning in the future" and that's why they didn't bring late season upgrades (they couldn't find extra lap time either but anyways this was the official company line).

I just think Emag's theory checks out. Something must have gone wrong or what I am seeing doesn't make sense.

No i’m not, are you?

Merc came out on top in 2021 so would have been handicapped by the ATR through 21, effecting development for 22.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... jbNRbdYx8a

Did Red Bull ever lead the WCC for a significant period during that season to handicap their ATR? I can’t remember.

As Basti said and I agreed, Merc looks like it has a significant cooling advantage over McLaren as well. Another works team perk at the beginning of a new regulation set.

Comparing McLaren and Red Bull now is it no surprise that they are adrift of Merc and Ferrari. McLaren had the highest ATR handicap, Red Bull could have spent the same amount of allowance on the 26 car as McLaren did and the extra allowance they had over McLaren they spent on developing the 25 car to get Max in the fight?

Red Bull were the WCC leaders going into July 2021. My original post already addresses this. Both Mercedes and Red Bull had equal resources.

Red Bull's technical team got shown up by McLaren's team the last couple of years. After all, they are not the behemoth they were a couple of years ago given the staff attrition. I am not surprised Red Bull aren't at the top. McLaren were expected to be at the top as far as I was concerned. To me ATR is a bad excuse. Something went wrong somewhere.


Lastly, Mclaren did switch off 2025 development rather early, it was a concern that they couldn’t find much more lap time back then and it’s disappointing that there aren’t better now.


Yes, all I am saying is I expected more of McLaren. You can give many theories as to why they are bad but reality is they should be better than Mercedes from a chassis perspective if you had normal expectations going into this year. Sure, with the benefit of hindsight and Mercedes not giving their customers equal PUs is a big surprise but that still doesn't mean McLaren's chassis is right now good.

I am not sure Stella wanted to start this year behind as he naturally wanted to keep winning titles.

Why would anyone expect McLaren to be “better than Mercedes”?… You say that having less ATR is an excuse, but in reality is the biggest handicap you can give a team (it is absurd that there is ATR when there is a regulation change, even worst when it’s such a big change as the one in 2026).

Mercedes had more CFD / Wind Tunnel hours
Mercedes wasn’t fighting for a WCC or WDC
Mercedes as a works Team was always going to have an slight advantage at the beginning of a regulation change when it comes to integration of PU with Chassis (beyond potential advantage regarding deployment / harvesting strategies that are unique to this regulation change)

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Mercedes is having a very strong start to the season and that is ahed of McLaren

[FittingMechanics]

If McLaren was not on the back foot that would be very bad for the other teams. Out of the Big 4 they are the team that will be able to find "low hanging fruit". Just from the PU optimization perspective they should gain more throughout the season as they are the only customer team in Big 4 which means they haven't designed their PU to suit the car. Also McLaren showed the best development for a few years now.

I wanted them to be closer but it's not unexpected.

Having lower ATR is bad, but that's why they are trying to be smart with upgrades and not rush them.

[Emag]

The middle east is kinda on fire right now, otherwise I would just ask them to dump more oil money into the McLaren Group and just build their own engines.

Even without the trouble in the Middle East would building their own PU be viable? RBPT have done an awesome job but they needed assistance initially from Honda and now Ford.
Merc certainly won’t sell them any IP and which other car maker not already in the sport is a realistic option?
McLarens options are incredibly limited, their most realistic option and it pains me to say it, is to piss and moan to the FIA to create a rule where not only the PU is to be run in the exact same way (or how ever the rule is written) but also all info has to be shared between the works and customer teams as to how to run it at its most optimum- which in turn could annoy the PU manufacturer who then in turn decides to leave the sport and that seems to be the LAST thing Liberty Media and the FIA want hence why we are in this current situation right now

This is not a "pull the plug and fit your own engine tomorrow" kind of thing. They are in contract with Mercedes until 2030. If they feel they will be screwed over they would have to act as soon as possible. Ideally by the end of this season already if they want to be serious about it.

I don't think the facilities are the biggest problem though. That's easily done if you want to do it and have the money. The problem is poaching the right people. That's one of the reasons why RBPT is so good right now and Horner deserves some credit for that. There's a lot of experienced engineering talent in the UK already, but convincing them to jump ship is not easy.