Andrea Stella explains how McLaren is preparing for the Barcelona shakedown and the extra days it is using for more aero development of F1 2026 car.
The upcoming five days Barcelona shakedown from January 26 until 30 is the first chance for F1 teams to not just run their 2026 car, but also the power unit which has seen a big change. More than half the grid have already undertaken shakedown, leaving five teams still to run.
While Williams has decided to skip all-together, McLaren has opted to leave it until last to run their car. There is no message from the likes of Red Bull, Aston Martin and Haas about their programme, even though there are reports of Red Bull going straight on Day 1 of shakedown.
But McLaren has decided against running on Day 1. From the five days allotted by the FIA, each F1 team can only run for three days of their choice. The reigning champions will probably start on Day 2 and if not, then for sure from Day 3 onward to complete their quota.
This isn’t a new plan as per team boss Stella, who spoke to selected media including F1 website earlier this week at McLaren Technology Center. He explained that the team had decided early on to potentially skip Day 1 running, and spend more time on AVL in Australia.
It is not that they are behind schedule, but more that they want to undertake more aero tests and have as much time possible for development of the 2026 F1 car. “We are champions, but we don’t carry the [idea of] being champions into 2026,” said Stella to media including F1 website. “Everyone will start from the starting blocks. Everyone will start from zero. Our internal narrative is anything we will achieve, we will have to deserve it, and we will have to earn it on the ground.
“So that’s our mind, that’s our philosophy. This is why we’ve been ambitious with the 2026 car. At the same time, because it’s such a level of redesign, you also have to be cautious to make sure that you actually have a car – that you realise it in time, that you build it in time. And so far, I have to say that our programme is going to plan, something of which, obviously, we are happy with. It’s been built, the car is now in AVL in Austria to run at the dyno.
“I think this is common practice now in Formula 1, such that you can sign off some fundamental systems of the car much more than what you can do when you run some of these subsystems, like the gearbox in a gearbox rig and dyno that we may have here at MTC. It’s a facility, AVL, that we have been using for some time, and that’s where the car is at the moment and then the car will be in Barcelona for the shakedown on track.
“We plan to start testing either in day two or day three [of the Barcelona Shakedown], so we will not be testing in day one. We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development. You all may know that you are allowed to test three days over the five that are available in Barcelona, and then we will start from either day two or day three and we will test for three days. Actually, this was always going to be plan A. There’s also so much of a change that we don’t need to be necessarily the first on track.
“We wanted to give as much time as possible for development, because every day of development, every day of design was adding a little bit of performance. This also means that if you are early on track, you will have the reassurance of knowing what you need to know as soon as possible. At the same time, it means that you might have committed to the design and the realisation of the car relatively early, so you’re not compromised against development time and ultimate performance.
“Obviously, there will be updates pretty much, I guess, for every car between testing and at least testing in Barcelona and the first race. But we thought that in the economy of a season, it was important to start and launch the car in the most competitive package and configuration. That’s why we pushed all the timing to the limit, but within a very manageable limit. So at the moment, we are on plan to be testing on day two, and we didn’t feel any urge to plan for testing on day one,” summed up Stella.
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