{"id":431423,"date":"2026-01-23T04:14:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T04:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/431423\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T04:14:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T04:14:09","slug":"mclaren-tease-brand-new-mcl40-car-design-for-f1-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/431423\/","title":{"rendered":"McLaren tease brand-new MCL40 car design for F1 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>McLaren have teased a silhouette image of their new MCL40 F1 car for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n<p>The reigning world champions head into 2026 looking to defend both the constructors&#8217; and drivers&#8217; world titles after sealing a stunning championship double in 2025 as<a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/racer\/912058\/lando-norris\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Lando Norris <\/a>clinched his maiden <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/news\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">F1<\/a> crown.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/teams\/mclaren\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">McLaren <\/a>are set to release the first images of their 2026 challenger on the eve of the first week of pre-season testing in Barcelona, before holding an online season launch event on 9 February.<\/p>\n<p>But the Woking squad have dropped a teaser image depicting the outline of the MCL40, while keeping its design secrets hidden.<\/p>\n<p>McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall has confirmed the team will not make big design changes between pre-season testing and the opening race in Australia.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Between Barcelona and Melbourne, I think what you see is probably pretty much what we&#8217;ll bring to the first race,\u201d Marshall told media including Crash.net.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;A lot of our effort will be into understanding this. Also, we need to take into account what the opposition are up to: we need to be inspired by what they may or may not achieve and may or may not show us.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We really are going to have to be very focused on getting our heads around this car. It\u2019s very complicated. It&#8217;s all new. There&#8217;s a lot of stuff that we need to dial in and tune in.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo I think bringing a lot of new stuff to it, early doors, would complicate stuff. And I think we&#8217;re better off understanding our platform before we get too keen on redesigning it before it&#8217;s turned a wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Everyone starts from zero\u2019<\/p>\n<p>McLaren have decided against running their new car on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crash.net\/f1\/news\/1088584\/1\/mclaren-miss-first-day-f1-2026-testing-heres-why\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">first day of the first pre-season test <\/a>in Spain next week in order to maximise development time and performance.<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p> Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n<p>Team principal Andrea Stella described the amount of work McLaren have had to do to prepare for F1\u2019s rules reset as \u201cunprecedented\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s been so much work behind the design, the realisation, the build of the 2026 cars that, for what I can remember is almost unprecedented, because never before has there been such a huge and simultaneous change of chassis, power unit and tyres,\u201d the Italian explained.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But even the sheer volume of redesigning that went through the last 20 months at McLaren has been probably the biggest design, or in general, dealing with a new car project that I was a part of.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This all makes it extremely interesting to see how the cars will perform, how the competitiveness order will be somehow mixed up. We are champions, but we don&#8217;t carry being champions into 2026. Everyone will start from the starting blocks &#8211; everyone will start from zero.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLaren have teased a silhouette image of their new MCL40 F1 car for the 2026 season. The reigning&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,1737,913,2333,85],"class_list":["post-431423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris","tag-mclaren","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431423","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=431423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}