McLaren warns: developing the MCL39 would compromise 2026 F1 project. McLaren focuses entirely on the 2026 F1 car.

This decision is firmly defended by team principal Andrea Stella, despite pressure from competitors. According to the Orvieto-born engineer, the aerodynamic development of this season’s car has reached a point of saturation, offering minimal gains despite increasing investment.

In 2025, the final year of the current technical cycle, the opportunity to gain valuable time on next year’s car is far more important than a few tenths of a second per lap. In an era of budget caps and restrictions on wind tunnel and CFD testing, resource management becomes crucial. Investing today in the current car, Stella explains, would mean starting 2026 at a deficit that would be difficult to recover.

McLaren stops development, Red Bull takes the risk

“The 2026 project would be severely compromised if we continued developing the MCL39,” the Italian engineer explained. “We have transferred all our resources to the new technical cycle because we want to be competitive in the future. Aerodynamically, our current car had already reached a dead end: it would take weeks to gain even a single point of efficiency.”

“With the 2026 car, each week we add significant downforce. Moreover, as champions, we have more restrictions on testing and simulations, so we must use our resources carefully. Staying focused on the present wouldn’t make sense. There are no regrets: even if we had spent three more weeks developing the 2025 car, we wouldn’t have gained a tenth. Implementing the mid-season upgrades was already a huge effort. We realized that our evolution had reached its limit. In these cases, it’s better to focus on what’s coming rather than risk losing direction.”

Red Bull, by contrast, has taken an opposite approach. Team principal Laurent Mekies confirmed that work on the RB21 will continue, even at the cost of slowing the 2026 project, considering it important to validate their simulation methods. “It is essential to understand whether our way of analyzing data and developing the car actually works,” the French engineer stated. “Only in this way can we confidently approach the next winter and the new regulations. It has a cost for the 2026 project, but for us, it is the right compromise.”