2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[FittingMechanics]

The line under the C in the new logo is just atrocious, it ruins the whole thing.

+1... And the spacing...

It's what was first used. But yeah, looks jarring at the moment.

[WardenOfTheNorth]

The logo fiasco was not needed, come on WTF?

Th old logo looks like new and vice versa, ... big step backwards in design

Just think of the Merch sales as we all update to the new logo!!

[101FlyingDutchman]

Deeply impressive update visually this late in the season. You’d think this would be the last “big” upgrade. Let’s hope it brings less drag or at least equal drag with more downforce.

[Darth-Piekus]

I heard Piastri complaining about vibrations in the brakes. Hopefully it's not some side effect of the full changes we made.

[jacme22]

Am I blind or the rear wing is not being deployed on the straights?

[Darth-Piekus]

Is it not being deployed? If not how much does that cost?

Also the team is having issues as they are on the garage for a long time and at this point they might lose the rest of FP1.

[jacme22]

Both cars out. Not the best way to start the weekend.

Edit: rear wing deploys but we are soooo slow in the last straight.

[SilviuAgo]

Both cars out. Not the best way to start the weekend.

Edit: rear wing deploys but we are soooo slow in the last straight.

From what I saw, at least on Lando's car that is the "normal" RW (like in Madrid), not the H-Wing (like the one used in Monza).
Again, a lot of time, more than half of the session, lost by Lando. Glad that this is not a sprint weekend. Time to recover on FP2. And maybe Lando will have the chance to do also a soft quali run.

[mwillems]

McLaren did kind of prove my point though :

As for potential "strugglers", I could see McLaren suffering to be honest. At least initially. Going into a relatively complicated new regulation with the least amount of wind tunnel hours seems challenging. RedBull did just fine in 2022 though, so who knows. But even if they start out rough, I would expect them to get better during the season because they have great people and probably the most up to date infrastructure of the top teams at the moment. Maybe a 2024-like season for them wouldn't be too farfetched (as in start a bit slow and at some point in the season come out strong with an upgrade package).

The current team is not amazing at aerodynamic innovations. They didn't come up with anything crazy on their own. What we see now is a mix/match of already seen ideas from the others. Not unlike what happened in 2024 actually. Now it remains to be seen if they can optimize these "foreign" ideas as well as they did back in 2024.

Are you including the floor in that?

Aero of the last generation was predominantly about maximising the floor, so you wouldn't see anything too crazy on top of the car, I'd expect, the magic was underneath.

Why the car was draggy may have as much to do with the internals as the Aero team, shape isn't purely down to the aero folks.

[mwillems]

I've seen enough. It will be 9 wins in 9 races.

It won't! They won't win at Baku, without luck. Car will not be fast enough. 2nd fastest car at best, probably 3rd.

[Darth-Piekus]

We shall see. I'm pretty sure there's more to show in FP2 and tomorrow in FP3 after they make changes overnight Let's not forget that Mclaren lost a pole in Monza who is the temple of speed.

[jacme22]

[AR3-GP]

[Darth-Piekus]

What was the time of S1 and S2 of Lando which he aborted at the end? Anyone has the timers?

[mwillems]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HS-YbN3XAAA ... name=large

Time lost in sector 3 <> milliseconds. Huge.