McLaren had to sprint up to the last few meters in the 2024 season to ward off Ferraris jumping horse and to do the first design title since 1998, the team is heading for the second title almost in the gallop this year.
With eleven wins from 14 races, McLaren won almost twice as often as in the previous year (six wins). And since there are no other rivals this time, Lando Norris and Oscar Piatri will make up among themselves who will replace Lewis Hamilton as McLaren’s next world champion.
The origin of this overwhelming success is years ago – carefully structured by team boss Andrea Stella and CEO ZAK Brown, who wondered why the fertile environment of the McLaren Technology Center did not bring the results that the engineering team actually deserved.
Part of this was to unleash the full potential of existing top people such as aerodynamics expert Peter Prodromou, whose contract was extended at the beginning of the year and to strengthen the team by external top forces such as the highly respected ex-Red bull designer Rob Marshall.
McLaren is not on the safe side
The way to this year’s car, the MCL39, was also planned in the long term. Since the last season of the current regulations is in 2025 and threatened a major control reform in 2026, the question arose: Should there be an evolution or a revolution in 2025?
For many teams further back in the field, the answer was easy – 2026 offers the great chance of comeback. But in the middle of the title fight in 2024 against Red Bull and Ferrari, Stella realized that if you want to stay at the top, you must not rely on safety. The successor to the MCL38, who was finally crowned with the title, had to be brave and ambitious.
“At some point during the 2024 season we thought: 2025 we really have to take a step forward,” explains Stella in an interview with “Motorsport.com”.
“Because we had seen that the top 4 teams were very close to each other, which meant a lot of variability in the outcome of a race weekend. That also means: If you invest a little more and can settle from this group, you regularly have chances for great success.”
Video: Piatri vs. Norris: A duel elects Formula 1
McLaren’s goal: 2025 strong for 2026
One strategic advantage was to accelerate the development before January 2 – the official starting signal for the Aero work on the 2026 car. This would allow to concentrate fully on 2026 at an early stage if successful.
“At the same time, we thought: If we look good with a strong car in 2025, we can reduce the pressure to ’25 and focus more on ’26. That is why we implemented many innovations in the MCL39 – in areas where we worked on the limit of our engineering knowledge. This required courage and commitment.”
This required the greatest belief in the engineers in Woking that McLaren would no longer do more than it can manage. Stella admitted that the design department found solutions – which are kept secret but triggered many speculations – “which we have never done before”.
“The team is currently in a position in which we can take this type of technical risk and we learn on the go. You take this risk and trust that you develop the right technology and the right processes to realize solutions that look aerodynamically good, for example, whose implementation is new territory,” says Stella.
“With this goal in mind, we innovated almost every single area and won efficiency. I think the results we see on the route are direct evidence of this – and another reason for the entire team to be proud of what we have achieved.”
With a clever packaging of the MCL39, the design team of the aerodynamic department basically gave more scope. The result: a much more efficient car, in an area with which McLaren often had problems, and at the same time more tire -friendly over the distance – especially in heat. A side effect was a somewhat blunt front axle in qualifying, which affected Norris at the beginning of the season, but has now been largely solved.
MCL39, the good all -rounder
The launch car was also upgraded with new soil and wing elements, which brought even more downforce with the same air resistance. McLaren is still almost unbeatable on routes with long, medium -fast curves, but has developed into an all -rounder that can gain practically anywhere. Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes each have their strengths, but also clear weaknesses.
This explains why McLaren was so dominant on routes like Bahrain and Miami, while Verstappen and Red Bull were stronger on high-speed slopes such as Suzuka and Imola, and why Montreal Mercedes-Pilot George Russell played in the cards. The basic performance level is now so high that McLaren is at least a second or third best car and almost always podiums or victories.
Stella emphasizes that the goal was not to build an all-round car with more focus on usable performance than on top caps. “We didn’t think: ‘Oh, we want the car to be good on every route,” he says. “We simply wanted to tackle the basics – efficiency in cooling, as much downforce as possible, produce a good interaction with the tires in an efficient way. That seems to be paid out – also in the form of versatility and consistency under different conditions.”
“When we go into detail, we see: In high -speed curves like in Silverstone, we are not the best car – Red Bull and Ferrari could be better. Or on slow courses with high curses, like in Canada, we were not the best car. So there are areas in which we are not in front. But through our investment in the basics we have created a very robust package.”
Defeats 2025 are planned
McLaren will not dominate every race after the summer break, says Stella. Routes like Las Vegas were still a stranger after the clear defeat against Mercedes in the previous year.
But the constancy of the car ensures that nobody will catch up with the team in the World Cup – at the latest since the Spain GP, when a new technical guideline had hardly any effect on flexible front wings, as McLaren had previously predicted.
An underbody upgrade in Spa showed that McLaren did not consider his position to be a matter of course. More efficient rear wings should also help in Las Vegas and on other low-downforce routes.
McLaren’s superiority has an advantage for neutral fans: Norris and Piatri can fight for the title without a large team order – a championship battle that Formula 1 has not seen since 2021.
The engineers in Woking did their work – now it is up to the drivers to use their rocket, while Stella and Brown hope to keep the harmony in the team.