McLaren has surprised everyone, and after finishing the 2024 season in first place, the team decided to start 2025 first by bringing the MCL39 to the track on Thursday, unveiling the first images of the new car with which they will defend their world champion title. On the Silverstone track, the Woking team decided to perform the shakedown of the new MCL39, a car that, starting from the next Australian Grand Prix, will be entrusted to Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, although in camouflage livery, with the official colors being shown only on February 18 in London at the F1 event at the O2 Arena.
Hidden but visible
The camouflage livery helped ensure that no prying eyes could capture clear images and gather important technical information about the team’s new car. However, some details of the 2025 car slipped through, some of which are even “unusual”: sidepods that are not very sculpted, or perhaps generously designed on the outside but with a generous Ferrari-style ramp inside to achieve the down-wash effect, or a rather generous airscope compared to last season’s, along with a different nose or curious micro-aerodynamic solutions in the cockpit area. What stands out, beyond the originality of some solutions, are others that seem to have been borrowed from rival teams, which, despite not winning, appear to have demonstrated their validity.
Ideas from Mercedes, Red Bull, and… Ferrari
To defend its world champion status, the car has decided to adopt ideas that the competition debuted last season. According to photos of the car by Rob Marshall and Peter Prodromou, a standout feature is the front wing, heavily inspired by the one Red Bull brought to the track last season starting from the Hungarian Grand Prix, with a main plane that has a straight edge and a “square” step in the nose area, designed to increase airflow toward the Venturi channels. Not only that, as McLaren also took inspiration from Mercedes and Ferrari by equipping the MCL39 with new inlets, no longer rectangular and horizontally oriented, but with a triangular cross-section and vertical development. This helps reduce the car’s overall front section, benefiting the drag, which, despite more or less legal DRS, had been one of the previous model’s drawbacks. A clear reference to the W15, but also to the SF-24, which, after the Imola package, had a similar solution after merging the inlet with the bypass duct’s intake. So, McLaren, in addition to inheriting the heavy legacy of the previous model, aims to show that they can achieve success with solutions from others that, according to the data, didn’t make a difference on other cars.
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