McLaren plans delayed Barcelona test start for MCL40

McLaren won’t be taking to the track on the first day of the F1 2026 pre-season shakedown in Barcelona and team boss Andrea Stella has explained the logic of that decision.

The first opportunity for the teams to properly test their new machines for F1 2026 comes on January 26 in Barcelona, but reigning world champions McLaren has confirmed it will not appear on track on that date.

Andrea Stella explains McLaren decision to miss day one of testing

While some of the teams are cashing in regulatory provisions such as filming days and demonstrations to carry out initial shakedowns of their revolutionary new 2026 machines, the vast majority of teams won’t take to the track until the first of three pre-season tests scheduled before the season opener in Australia.

Three collective tests are planned, although the first of these is a behind-closed-doors private shakedown period available to all the teams.

Taking place at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya between January 26 and 30, every team is permitted to carry out unlimited mileage during the scheduled hours across three of these five days.

These days can be used as a team sees fit, meaning they don’t have to be consecutive, and a ‘day’ will be counted once a team’s car crosses the pit exit line during the sessions.

Give the huge regulation changes for F1 2026, the primary focus of the test will be on understanding the intricate new systems to control and manage the cars and power units, as well as establishing some initial reliability baselines, rather than chasing performance.

For the teams, the closed-door nature of the five-day shakedown gives them the chance to iron out some of the initial gremlins without excessive pressure or media scrutiny.

None of the teams have yet revealed any run plans, but McLaren has confirmed that its new MCL40 will not appear on track during the very first day of the test.

One of the final teams to fire up its new car, an event that took place late last week, McLaren’s decision has been explained by team boss Andrea Stella.

Speaking to a small group of select media, including PlanetF1.com, during a pre-season briefing at the McLaren Technology Centre, Stella said the team’s plan is to start testing on “day two or three” at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

“We will not be testing in day one,” he said.

“We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development. You are allowed to test three days over the five that are available in Barcelona. We will start from either day two or day three and we will test for three days.”

Asked whether this had been the intent throughout the winter, or a situation that had evolved through the car’s development and thus requiring extra build or preparation time, Stella explained that there simply is no urgency to getting out on track at the first possible opportunity.

“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,” he said.

“So 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.”

With Cadillac, Audi, Racing Bulls, and Alpine having already carried out shakedowns via filming days, Stella suggested these teams may be leaving some performance on the table in the early stages of the season.

“If you are early on track, you will have the reassurance of knowing what you need to know as soon as possible,” he said.

“But at the same time, it means that you might have committed to the design and the realisation of the car relatively early, so you will have a compromise against development time and ultimate performance.

“Obviously, there will be updates pretty much, I guess, for every car between 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.

“We didn’t feel any urge to plan for testing on day one.”

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Andrea Stella: McLaren programme is ‘on plan’

With McLaren’s pace advantage at the start of 2025 being sufficient to the point where it allowed the Woking-based squad the opportunity to swap over resources and focus to ’26 at quite an early stage in the championship, Stella spoke about the extent of the challenge that has been faced in pulling together a car for the new regulation cycle.

“There’s been so much work behind the design, the realisation, the build of the 2026 cars that, for me, is almost unprecedented,” he said, “not only in terms of the changes themselves, because I think never before there’s been such a huge and simultaneous change of chassis, power unit and tyres.

“But even the sheer volume of redesigning that went through the last 20 months, I would say, at McLaren, has been probably the biggest design, or in general dealing with a new car project that I was part of.

“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’t carry being champions into 2026 – 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, and that you build it in time.”

With the car having been successfully fired up and the team gearing up to take to the track next week, Stella revealed that it will be arriving to the Spanish circuit having already travelled to Austria to carry out system reliability and dyno testing at the AVL facility in Graz, Austria.

“It’s been built. The car is now in AVL in Austria to run at the dyno,” he said.

“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.

“AVL is a facility that we have used 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. This will happen directly at the test.

“Our programme is going on plan, something which, obviously, we are happy with, and gives me the chance to thank the entire team for having been able to realise the 2026 car.”

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