What McLaren’s “aggressive” approach says about its confidence to nail both 2025 and 2026

Every year, Formula 1’s teams have to make the decision when to end focus on the current season and pour all of its engineering resources into designing the next car. It’s an important thing to time correctly, and F1 is littered with examples of teams who either kept developing too late and started the next year badly, or diverted course too early and sacrificed success in the immediate term for little pay-off.

On the cusp of a new ruleset, it’s even more important to get that timing right; the big teams can’t afford to phone it in for a year, but equally do not have the cost cap allowance nor the quantity of personnel to go all out across two projects. They’ll have to split their time effectively to fight on two fronts: the present and the future.

McLaren feels it can achieve that. Now imbued with the confidence of having won its first constructors’ championship since 1998, the team believes that it can make a full fist of defending its title – and potentially battling for the drivers’ crown to boot – while also being competitive in 2026.

Andrea Stella, the team principal under whom McLaren has completed its long journey from the wilderness to the front of the field, says that its approach to 2025 would not have differed had the 2026 not loomed on the horizon.

To augment that approach, Stella also did not want the team to become complacent. He spoke of the recently revealed MCL39, which broke cover in an orange-and-black dazzle camouflage livery, and how the team had pursued an “aggressive” approach for the successor to its championship-winning car.

“We have not changed the approach or the rate of development with a front-loading of our developments,” the Italian remarked at the launch. “We have just tried to go as fast as possible in terms of developing the car, which means that there will be some updates during the early races of the season.

Watch: Why Stella is confident as McLaren launch their F1 2025 season

“But this would have been the same even without the 2026 changes of regulations looming ahead. If we had just gone as fast as possible, because we are very aware that last season, even if it had been a successful season, the margins we had from a performance point of view mean that we needed to be aggressive with the car to try and cash in as much performance as possible.”

He expanded further, citing the rate of development of the other teams. In effect, it follows one of F1’s oldest adages: stand still, and prepare to fall backwards – and with the tight margins exhibited in modern F1, this might equate to six or seven positions in the constructors’ championship, not just one or two.

Consider F1’s average supertimes over 2024, which is the culmination of the teams’ average fastest laps expressed as a percentage of the theoretical best. Over the year, Red Bull led the way just 0.202% percent away from the 100% time, with McLaren a shade behind at 0.266%. Sauber, the overall slowest team, was 1.9% short. The gaps are shrinking, and F1 is becoming ever more competitive between all 10 teams.

“I think those margins were so small that considering the development that other teams would have had, had we not gone as fast as possible in terms of development, we might very quickly lose any advantage that we had,” Stella continued.

“And with four teams that at any single weekend were in condition to win the race, it’s very easy to fall from being pole position to being P8 on the grid, so definitely we kept full gas in terms of development, and we will see if we have been able to develop more than our competitors from the 2024 to the 2025 car.”

McLaren doesn’t quite have the luxury of being able to develop its MCL39 all the way through 2025, as aerodynamic testing and cost cap restrictions will dictate a relatively early switchover to 2026 for most. It’ll be a gradual process of moving people over from one project to another, although the point at which the team is fully committed to next year’s all-new formula must be timely.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

And McLaren has its own example to consider, as it – under no spending restrictions – was locked into a fierce title scrap with Ferrari over the 2008 titles. Both outfits kept developing until the last moment, a decision that arguably hurt the teams considerably when it came to 2009.

Versus the Brawns and Red Bulls, which had the luxury of time over 2008 to build up their concepts, the Ferrari and McLaren interpretations of those rules were severely underbaked at the start of the year. Sure, both turned into race winners by the end with continued development, but they were pretty much immediately out of the reckoning for either title.

That being said, there’s BMW’s cautionary tale of switching over too soon – some suspect Robert Kubica might have been in title contention in 2008 had the German auto giant not played it too safe, a decision that ultimately yielded the pallid F1.09 chassis.

McLaren should be lauded for being aggressive with its 2025 goals – but it must not take its eye off the ball for the long term. But, per Stella, the team believes that it can achieve its targets either side of the new regulatory overhaul.