2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[SilviuAgo]

Right....from the couch perspective it is really easy to have such an opinion.

I guess everyone else of us that arent living in the wonderland we kind of knew that it will be nearly a mission impossible for them to make a race winning car in the first season of the new ruleset. Being handicaped with smaller windtunnell allocation, being even screwed by the Merc itself right before the start and with ADUO rules that will give a team like a Ferrari a free pass to catch up in terms of engine power it is really not so surprising they are struggling....as a 4th, 3rd and even as a 2nd team on a race weekend.

If we survived Honda times, we are probably gonna survive being 3rd or 4th in the standings...

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, so I respect yours. Just a small mention, which I wouldn't have brought up otherwise: the race wasn't watched from the comfort of a couch. I had the honor of working in the team that handled the MCL39's cooling system in 2025, being directly involved in the preparation for the Mexican Grand Prix. The Monaco race was watched alongside some of my colleagues in Cologne, where we are based. So yes, perhaps partly out of sentimentality, we wished for a step forward this year. However, I am sure that those who work non-stop (just as we did last year) on the MCL40 will manage to overcome all obstacles, and Lando and Oscar will have at their disposal a car worthy of the McLaren name. Cheers mate!

Well what are you doing wasting time here?? Get on with improving the MCL40

On a serious note, thank you for your contributions towards to the titles recently and your posts on here.

Thank you very much, but our contribution was of minor impact compared to what the MCL39 truly achieved. For Mexico, the engineers at the MTC came up with a few ideas for the cooling system but needed additional validation. And we were more than happy to help, being McLaren fans ourselves (both me and a large part of my colleagues ). You can imagine our satisfaction when Lando won that race and that cooling system—which had been questioned and doubted even by some F1 experts—worked flawlessly. It was a small victory for us too. For the MCL40, we haven't had any involvement so far, but we did help with a few elements on the new MCL-HY. Unfortunately, it's confidential and we cannot discuss the matter, but we hope that our contribution, along with everyone's here in Cologne (especially given the relationship with Toyota in the hypercar sector), will be visible right from the debut. The tests at Riccardo Paletti and Imola are looking good so far. Cheers!

[SilviuAgo]

At this point I'm convinced that Lando used all his life-happiness tokens last year, celebrating his championship.

Yes and no For me, surprisingly, Lando seems a different driver vs last year. And this on a positive note.
He has another level of dealing on track action. And from this six races, three were a nightmare. I don't know how 2025 Lando would have taken this.
But at some point during this campaign the staff in MTC will deal with all the challenges that MCL40 brought and then Lando (and also Oscar) will be at another level compared to 2025.

[AR3-GP]

“Never before we felt that being a customer team has put us on the back foot. And when I say this, and I want to be clear here, to avoid any misunderstanding: it's not because you are a lower priority for [Mercedes] HPP”, Stella said when asked by Motorsport.com in Monaco.

“[It is] because you have less opportunities to integrate, to stay on the same timeline when it comes to addressing reliability problems or exploitation of the power unit from a performance point of view, combining the efforts when you use the facilities, and some experiments on the chassis side that you can add to a long run of the power unit when you are a works team.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... /10828340/

With the PU regulations being in such a flux, it may continue to be tricky for Mclaren. PU's will be tweaked next year, and potentially again in 2028, and then again in 2030. They benefitted a lot from the freeze in the previous regulations.

I think they are already planning to make their own PUs in the next regulation cycle. It's the next step in making Mclaren fully independent and self-sufficient.

[haza]

Kinda feeling both sides of the coin this season half of me is dissatisfied with the constant unreliability McLaren are having especially with the battery yet the other half expected this under a first year with new engine/chassis regs that being said there’s a couple things on my mind

First of all the power unit situation I do believe that if McLaren have the money they should think about there own engines now for the next set of regs not to shed any bad light on merc hpp as they’ve done a good job making a decent engine but as a fresh start with these rules McLaren are going to play catch up as a customer as Mercedes learn themselves I imagine next year will be better reliability wise for both sides but it’s not something a reigning champion team can afford to deal with have to remember our success of recent years came during a frozen engine period where McLaren had an easier chance at understanding it there’s risk in going independent but rbpt have shown it’s doable

Secondly and the some what positive point considering McLaren isn’t known for getting new regs right straight away I do believe the car albeit when it’s running is a mostly top 2-3 team and to have that good baseline to build from matters a lot as opposed to starting at the back spending time scratching heads we have a decent chassis to build on once the reliability comes so should the good finishes

[CjC]

“Never before we felt that being a customer team has put us on the back foot. And when I say this, and I want to be clear here, to avoid any misunderstanding: it's not because you are a lower priority for [Mercedes] HPP”, Stella said when asked by Motorsport.com in Monaco.

“[It is] because you have less opportunities to integrate, to stay on the same timeline when it comes to addressing reliability problems or exploitation of the power unit from a performance point of view, combining the efforts when you use the facilities, and some experiments on the chassis side that you can add to a long run of the power unit when you are a works team.

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... /10828340/

With the PU regulations being in such a flux, it may continue to be tricky for Mclaren. PU's will be tweaked next year, and potentially again in 2028, and then again in 2030. They benefitted a lot from the freeze in the previous regulations.

I think they are already planning to make their own PUs in the next regulation cycle. It's the next step in making Mclaren fully independent and self-sufficient.

There has been a lot of noise today about McLaren building their own engine:

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/what ... /10828266/

(Sorry if it’s behind a paywall)

Just look at Red Bull smashing it why wouldn’t they want a piece of that action if they can afford to build the infrastructure!