{"id":420345,"date":"2026-01-18T02:49:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T02:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/420345\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T02:49:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T02:49:16","slug":"mclaren-in-tense-waiting-game-with-red-bull-over-unanswered-development-war-gamble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/420345\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren in tense waiting game with Red Bull over unanswered development war gamble"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>McLaren has admitted it is locked in a waiting game with Red Bull over a risk it took in 2025 to cut off development of its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/series\/single-seater\/formula-1\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Formula 1<\/a> car earlier than its title rival. <\/p>\n<p>McLaren started 2025 with a car that was comfortably the class of the field, the MCL39 enjoying a substantial advantage over its rivals.<\/p>\n<p>Winning seven out of the first ten races, the team was set firmly on the the path to the constructors\u2019 championship, wrapping up the title with seven races remaining.<\/p>\n<p>But despite its success, Lando Norris did not secure the driver\u2019s championship until <a href=\"https:\/\/www.formula1.com\/en\/results\/2025\/races\/1276\/abu-dhabi\/race-result\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the last race of the season,<\/a> beating Max Verstappen by just two points. <\/p>\n<p>McLaren\u2019s loss of race winning pace was caused by the team taking the decision mid-season to stop all development of the MCL39, while Red Bull continued until the final races.<\/p>\n<p>The team\u2019s Engineering Technical Director Neil Houldley stands by the decision, stating the need to enter 2026 with a head-start on the vast array of new rules. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf we had continued to develop in 2025, we would have certainly gone into 2026 slower than we\u2019re going to,\u201d Houldley said to media, including\u00a0Motorsport Week.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Max-Verstappen-Lando-Norris-F1-Qatar-GP-1024x576.webp.webp\" alt=\"McLaren and Red Bull chose two different development pathways in 2025\" class=\"wp-image-235580\"  \/>McLaren and Red Bull chose two different development pathways in 2025<\/p>\n<p>A clear cut off point for McLaren<\/p>\n<p>Houldley confirmed that McLaren got a stage where its upgrades where delivering fine margins, which reaffirmed the team\u2019s decision. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were looking for milliseconds; 30 milliseconds was a good upgrade at that point, so when you get to that sort of level, it was clear for us at the time [to stop development on the 2025 car].<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOther teams continued their development, and it certainly gave Red Bull some great gains towards the end of the year, but I still think we\u2019ve made the right decision, and when we get to 2026, hopefully, that will be proved.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motorsportweek.com\/2026\/01\/17\/the-crazy-lando-norris-moment-that-sparked-a-title-winning-turnaround\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The \u2018crazy\u2019 Lando Norris moment that sparked F1 title turnaround<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren has admitted it is locked in a waiting game with Red Bull over a risk it took&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,817,913,806,805,803,804,918,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-420345","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-mclaren","12":"tag-motor","13":"tag-motor-sports","14":"tag-motosport","15":"tag-motosports","16":"tag-red-bull","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}