2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

"we are working with oscar to make sure he gets more in tune with the mcl40. the potential is increasing, we need to realise it.

i always say to oscar: “let's do it with serenity”. we are deploying resources to this, like we did last year with lando. i expect the same results."

[WardenOfTheNorth]

It seems to me that the McLaren strategy team forgot that you can't overtake at the Madring. At any other circuit, bar Monaco, Lando would have had the pace to get back to the front and win.

[Macklaren]

It seems to me that the McLaren strategy team forgot that you can't overtake at the Madring. At any other circuit, bar Monaco, Lando would have had the pace to get back to the front and win.

What would rather have had them do?

[CjC]

"we are working with oscar to make sure he gets more in tune with the mcl40. the potential is increasing, we need to realise it.

i always say to oscar: “let's do it with serenity”. we are deploying resources to this, like we did last year with lando. i expect the same results."

No pressure then Oscar

[Ben1980]

"we are working with oscar to make sure he gets more in tune with the mcl40. the potential is increasing, we need to realise it.

i always say to oscar: “let's do it with serenity”. we are deploying resources to this, like we did last year with lando. i expect the same results."

Thats a bit of a back hander isnt it?

Saying we are doing it, means he cant complain. If he doesnt improve, after they have employed there will be questions.

If lando wins 2 more races and Oscar doesn't get a win, it will be a poor season.

[FittingMechanics]

It seems to me that the McLaren strategy team forgot that you can't overtake at the Madring. At any other circuit, bar Monaco, Lando would have had the pace to get back to the front and win.

What would rather have had them do?

Stay out, build a tire offset, hope Leclerc stays a roadblock, hope for another VSC or SC or a red (not impossible with all the walls)

This would have a higher chance of winning than falling behind Russell roadblock.

What they did was the worst option, no strategic upside just plain Lando you have to recover 15 seconds and pass 3 cars in "Monaco".

[mwillems]

"we are working with oscar to make sure he gets more in tune with the mcl40. the potential is increasing, we need to realise it.

i always say to oscar: “let's do it with serenity”. we are deploying resources to this, like we did last year with lando. i expect the same results."

Thats a bit of a back hander isnt it?

Saying we are doing it, means he cant complain. If he doesnt improve, after they have employed there will be questions.

If lando wins 2 more races and Oscar doesn't get a win, it will be a poor season.

It's interesting because part of the problem is simply pure downforce. The rear could be more planted and Oscar is struggling because he tends to go easy on the entry to get a better exit. Or at least he did, he might be adjusting this year but he still likes the rear and can deal with a peaky front, as he did last year.

But aside from getting a better rear, he needs overall downforce to mitigate his issues with the car. I do not think he will have the car he needs this year. Next year, perhaps yes, then the car might be one more to his liking, but this year, I'd be very surprised if he is matching Lando.

[mwillems]

And that's the other thing, how much is this car with it's energy generation affecting the way he wants to drive the car. How much can the car mitigate Oscar's issues, and how much is only down to Oscar.

It's a --- formula I think, Max is right, it's stupid to have to drive like this, but he's paid to do a job so he's got to figure it out.

But this year is a throwaway year. There's no point getting excited yet. Nothing counts (For me, since we won't win the WDC or WCC). Next year, hopefully, it will count and it will be a fresh start for both drivers.

[AR3-GP]

With Mike Elliot (former Mercedes TD) moving to CTO position at Alpine and Vowles at Williams, Toto has secured his non-threatening cabal of Mercedes customers. Mclaren's the odd man out. It's a matter of when, not if. Merceedes would not have to fight Mclaren if Mclaren had any other PU this year. It's a billion-dollar sport and Mercedes aren't running a charity. They want to win at all costs so I expect them to give Mclaren the boot in the coming years if that's what it takes to keep winning.

[AR3-GP]

Top speed is not everything. Mclaren are 2nd best team on average on the straights this year (time on straight) even if they have a lower top speed. Their quicker acceleration means they are still very rapid on the straights, not as good as Mercedes, but better than everyone else. The Mercedes PU teams lead the way, but perhaps the factory team has been able to exploit the PU software better leading to these larger differences. Keep in mind that the average starts at Rd3 and Mclaren only got on top of things after Spa. So this average is underselling the improvements that Mclaren have made. It's likely much closer between Mercedes and Mclaren now. Perhaps only 0.2% gap as Mclaren would never be able to fully close this gap with their non-optimal gear ratios.



https://x.com/Laptime_f1/status/2100323275553276357

[Emag]

With Mike Elliot (former Mercedes TD) moving to CTO position at Alpine and Vowles at Williams, Toto has secured his non-threatening cabal of Mercedes customers. Mclaren's the odd man out. It's a matter of when, not if. Merceedes would not have to fight Mclaren if Mclaren had any other PU this year. It's a billion-dollar sport and Mercedes aren't running a charity. They want to win at all costs so I expect them to give Mclaren the boot in the coming years if that's what it takes to keep winning.

McLaren is experimenting in LMP right now, but I dont think it would be their desire to develop their own engine in this complicated formula. Not sure how long they can keep going with Mercedes, but I am sure they will be some who would push for simpler engines. A return of the V8s by 2030s is not very farfetched at the moment.

[AR3-GP]

Well don't take my words in such an absolute stance. When I say top speed, I am not literally saying the single data point where the highest speed in a straight is achieved. My point is that McLaren haven't had traces that suggest "good" average time in the straights. Not even against some midfield teams, let alone Mercedes. I don't see how that graph makes sense. McLaren has not been the second best team in the straights throughout this season.

Looking at traces (literally) is the wrong approach, I think? We cannot see time on straight or slightly better acceleration by looking at a fastf1 velocity trace. It's beyond human perception, especially when you have to take into account differences in deployment when you look at a single straight. Anyone claiming to have such powers, I wouldn't believe them.

2nd, I looked at the methodology in your post. https://i.postimg.cc/pLSB8M89/image.png

You are measuring different distances for every single car? You cannot do time on straight using different distances for every car. It's not normalized. In the best case, you could take the earliest braking point of any car and use that to fix the distance over which you report the "time on straight". That's how I would do it. I would also only use Merc, Mclaren, Alpine, RBR, VCARB, Audi, Ferrari. The others are so far behind on the chassis that it's going to mess things up too much.

I have no idea if that's the approach used by laptimeF1, and perhaps you will call it confirmation bias, but I find it interesting that an approach which measures time on straight would group 3 Mercedes powered cars at the top, followed by RBPT, followed by Ferrari, and that would also be exactly the order accepted in the paddock.

The figure that you shared actually looks closer to a top speed map, for whatever reason. Maybe the issue is in what I discussed with you using different straight distances for each car, because they have different braking points. Then there's the whole 5 track vs all of them thing. It could also make sense not to use the first 3-4 GP since it's too noisy with the deployment learning. You could just do the same tracks as the laptimeF1 and see what happens.

One type of analysis that you could do to make Mclaren's acceleration more obvious would be to just use the first half of the straight, or 75% and see what you get out of that (top 7 in WCC).

[Emag]

Well don't take my words in such an absolute stance. When I say top speed, I am not literally saying the single data point where the highest speed in a straight is achieved. My point is that McLaren haven't had traces that suggest "good" average time in the straights. Not even against some midfield teams, let alone Mercedes. I don't see how that graph makes sense. McLaren has not been the second best team in the straights throughout this season.

Looking at traces (literally) is the wrong approach, I think? We cannot see time on straight or slightly better acceleration by looking at a fastf1 velocity trace. It's beyond human perception, especially when you have to take into account differences in deployment when you look at a single straight. Anyone claiming to have such powers, I wouldn't believe them.

2nd, I looked at the methodology in your post. https://i.postimg.cc/pLSB8M89/image.png

You are measuring different distances for every single car? You cannot do time on straight using different distances for every car. It's not normalized. In the best case, you could take the earliest braking point of any car and use that to fix the distance over which you report the "time on straight". That's how I would do it. I would also only use Merc, Mclaren, Alpine, RBR, VCARB, Audi, Ferrari. The others are so far behind on the chassis that it's going to mess things up too much.

I have no idea if that's the approach used by laptimeF1, and perhaps you will call it confirmation bias, but I find it interesting that an approach which measures time on straight would group 3 Mercedes powered cars at the top, followed by RBPT, followed by Ferrari, and that would also be exactly the order accepted in the paddock.

The figure that you shared actually looks closer to a top speed map, for whatever reason. Maybe the issue is in what I discussed with you using different straight distances for each car, because they have different braking points. Then there's the whole 5 track vs all of them thing. It could also make sense not to use the first 3-4 GP since it's too noisy with the deployment learning. You could just do the same tracks as the laptimeF1 and see what happens.

You know what, I will add a per-track breakdown to this feature and I will also render the trackmap with what the pipeline is considering corners and what it is considering straights for each track (because to be honest, I am not so sure myself at this point). I will come back tomorrow and share the results.

And you're right about the normalization. I have this whole complicated pipeline in the frontend for the telemetry alignment which deals with the problem of different distances as best as it can. I will port that over and use it on python for this.

[AR3-GP]

Well don't take my words in such an absolute stance. When I say top speed, I am not literally saying the single data point where the highest speed in a straight is achieved. My point is that McLaren haven't had traces that suggest "good" average time in the straights. Not even against some midfield teams, let alone Mercedes. I don't see how that graph makes sense. McLaren has not been the second best team in the straights throughout this season.

Looking at traces (literally) is the wrong approach, I think? We cannot see time on straight or slightly better acceleration by looking at a fastf1 velocity trace. It's beyond human perception, especially when you have to take into account differences in deployment when you look at a single straight. Anyone claiming to have such powers, I wouldn't believe them.

2nd, I looked at the methodology in your post. https://i.postimg.cc/pLSB8M89/image.png

You are measuring different distances for every single car? You cannot do time on straight using different distances for every car. It's not normalized. In the best case, you could take the earliest braking point of any car and use that to fix the distance over which you report the "time on straight". That's how I would do it. I would also only use Merc, Mclaren, Alpine, RBR, VCARB, Audi, Ferrari. The others are so far behind on the chassis that it's going to mess things up too much.

I have no idea if that's the approach used by laptimeF1, and perhaps you will call it confirmation bias, but I find it interesting that an approach which measures time on straight would group 3 Mercedes powered cars at the top, followed by RBPT, followed by Ferrari, and that would also be exactly the order accepted in the paddock.

The figure that you shared actually looks closer to a top speed map, for whatever reason. Maybe the issue is in what I discussed with you using different straight distances for each car, because they have different braking points. Then there's the whole 5 track vs all of them thing. It could also make sense not to use the first 3-4 GP since it's too noisy with the deployment learning. You could just do the same tracks as the laptimeF1 and see what happens.

You know what, I will add a per-track breakdown to this feature and I will also render the trackmap with what the pipeline is considering corners and what it is considering straights for each track (because to be honest, I am not so sure myself at this point). I will come back tomorrow and share the results.

And you're right about the normalization. I have this whole complicated pipeline in the frontend for the telemetry alignment which deals with the problem of different distances as best as it can. I will port that over and use it on python for this.

The other thing that's confusing me with the picture (https://i.postimg.cc/pLSB8M89/image.png) is that it's not referenced to 0. Easy enough to offset, but still, it's also suggesting that Mercedes is somehow as much as 0.54% off the fastest car in the straights on a rolling basis. That doesn't add up to me. It's as if the plot says there is no consistently quick car on the straights even though each team has had the same PU all year and the active aero stuff has eliminated 99% of track specific wings. What would cause these fluctuations when we can assume that all teams use the full energy allocation across all of the straights (and thus track specific deployment differences have a very small role to play).

Will await the update.

[Def]

Significantly, McLaren will also bring engine development and production in-house for the first time, having previously bought in engines for all of its road cars - primarily from Shoreham-based engineering firm Ricardo, which has powered all core models since McLaren's relaunch with the 12C in 2011.
https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new- ... -expansion