2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[CjC]

Just had a quick check of the replay

They mentioned the new front wing they had in Canada that hasn't been since.

The flip rear wing in testing here.

Sorry I’m struggling to follow.
I thought- almost certainly thought that they ran the new front wing in Barcelona?

I'll go through the replay again sometime they mentioned the from wing from Canada so I might have misheard the not seen since. Or they were wrong . I had it playing in the background a the time and wasn't paying a ton of attention just that caught my attention they didn't know if all they updates worked as planned.

Ok. Well I’ve found this. It’s Stella saying that the new front wing was raced in Barcelona and has given a step forward in laptime:
https://www.planetf1.com/news/mclaren-f ... da-setback

[_cerber1]

Just had a quick check of the replay

They mentioned the new front wing they had in Canada that hasn't been since.

The flip rear wing in testing here.

The front wing has been permanently installed on the car since the Spanish Grand Prix, and the team is working on developing this concept. The rear wing is scheduled to debut after the summer break, so don't expect it to appear anytime soon.

[Watto]

My mistake a bit again. Sorry for the confusion,

Sorry said it was removed in Canada I misheard not being used again. But did question if it didn't quite work as they thought. And maybe some updates in general had been a little hit and miss.

[FittingMechanics]

They were talking on Sky they wonder if McLaren are having correlation issues and why they abandoned the Macarena wing.

I thought they had hydraulic issues and had to drop the wing test. Is the wing hydraulically actuated?

It wasn't run for a second so it's not correlation.

Its been postponed until after Silverstone

McLaren have said from what I read that it didn't work as planned when they fitted it on the car so they abandoned it. I am sure I heard them talk about it on Sky (I might have been hearing things) they saw it rotate in the garage but didn't seem Tod it on track

"I don't want to go into technical detail on it, but we realised once we actuated it that actually it wasn't doing what we needed it to, and therefore it was best not to spend time trying to make it work in that first session. It was important for us to try and get running on the car that we wanted to run for the rest of the weekend, because the intention was only to run it for a very, very short period of time anyway.
"Actually, we were best to focus on the car and this weekend rather than development work, and we'll bring that wing back when we've learnt a little bit more and are comfortable with the design."

https://motorsport.com/f1/news/why-mcla ... /10833619/

They were supposed to run the wing in FP1 but they abandoned that plan before they started the session. It was the same session where Lando had hydraulic issue.

[CjC]

https://www.gpblog.com/en/news/we-need- ... l-upgrades

Stella stating the obvious, they have slipped behind Ferrari and now Red Bull.
More upgrades in the coming races but it’s slightly alarming that they are talking about being ‘3 months behind’ with development considering they switched off 2025 quite early which allowed Red Bull to close the gap/ overtake them from a car performance point of view that season and now Red Bull have surpassed them again in 2026.
Is it a repercussion of being 1st in the ATR for so long/ over a new regulation change?

[geogate]

ive always felt the big difference between red bull and Mclaren is the trackside engineering, and maybe the feedback from factory during events. Red Bull often look they they really struggling on a friday, but after they make the changes overnight they always get right up there again

[De Wet]

Pitpass:

Stella:

While a victory may be out of reach on pure pace, we are confident in the work happening back at the factory and believe it's a matter of time and patience before we are consistently fighting for Pole positions and wins.

Some optimism from Stella.

[De Wet]

ive always felt the big difference between red bull and Mclaren is the trackside engineering, and maybe the feedback from factory during events. Red Bull often look they they really struggling on a friday, but after they make the changes overnight they always get right up there again

I on the other think that Mclaren always start with a good baseline setup and don't require major changes as the weekend progress.

[CjC]

Pitpass:

Stella:

While a victory may be out of reach on pure pace, we are confident in the work happening back at the factory and believe it's a matter of time and patience before we are consistently fighting for Pole positions and wins.

Some optimism from Stella.

That sounds more encouraging

[Mcl_G10]

Id rather see the team go with the hards at the start, let the ferrari and merc push each other and look to benefit from a vsc later in the race to box for mediums/softs.

Just feel that a similar strategy to Hamilton last race is the best option to try get maximum points and benefit from squabbling at the front.
Saying that I think one of the ferrari will probably start on hards unless they are both confident of getting in front of the merc by turn 3.

[Mansell89]

I’d like to see us go bold on strategy also. Whether it’s going long in first stint or going aggressive.

Very interested to see how our tyre deg is today- great test of the top 4 teams in these conditions.

[Mcl_G10]

Reliability, Reliability, reliability.

[Szabi1112]

Our pace is shocking… similar to Racing Bulls…

[Mcl_G10]

Wow, we are way off it.

[FittingMechanics]

Another super conservative call by the team, going a couple of laps longer to lose a spot against Hadjar and not gain anything strategy wise.