The 2025 Formula One season took its first baby steps from a relatively long winter. Yes Lewis Hamilton has been grabbing the headlines for the past couple of weeks with his testing in previous years Ferrari cars, but now McLaren have fired the starting gun as their challenger for 2025 hit the track.
It was a rainy day in Silverstone yet the camouflage style papaya livery of the MCL39 stood out from grey background as Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris took to the track for the first of their two ‘filming days.’
These days which are FIA approved, were intended for teams to record video footage for promotional purposes. Yet as everyone now knows, each team uses one of their allowance in February to shakedown the car since the pre-season testing days in Jerez were withdrawn for cost saving purposes.
F1 “Filming day” joke
It’s highly dubious whether McLaren actually gained any marketing footage given the weather, but the day served to officially announce the F1 20205 season is under way. The most startling impression from Silverstone was the dramatic changes McLaren have made to their car which won the 2024 constructors’ title.
Given this is the final year of this set of FIA F1 car design regulations, together with the fact that this seasons cost capped budget must cover the design and build of the all new 2026 cars, the decision to fundamentally alter key aspects of last year’s car by the Woking based team is brave, to say the least least.
Team boss Andreas Stella explained their thinking. “What we tried to achieve with this new car is innovative. It’s a car in which we tried to raise the bar in many areas, including the fundamental layout,” he stated at the launch event in Northamptonshire.
Stella went on to reveal the thinking behind the decision, which was that the MCL38 whilst super competitive had hit a ceiling for further development and so much of the aerodynamics of the 2025 car have been redesigned along with the suspension with the hope of making the long run pace of the car superior to its predecessor.
Hamilton: Ferrari engine blamed for crash
McLaren F1 ‘revolution’ not ‘evolution
“Pretty much every fundamental component of the layout has been subject to some innovation,“ Stella continued, “in order to gain, sometimes not only by marginal gains, some technical opportunities for development. Everything has been subject to optimisation, sometimes incrementally, sometimes actually quite substantially.”
Whilst McLaren won their first F1 constructors’ title for 26 years in 2024, Ferrari were the form team over the closing quarter of the season. With six races to go, McLaren had a 75 point lead over their Italian rivals. This was slashed to just 14 points as the chequered flag fell in Abu Dhabi and on reflection the DNF for Carlos Sainz in the rain soaked race in Brazil, may have been all the difference between the Ferrari or McLaren claiming the team’s top spot.
Coming into 2024, Andreas Stella made the claim that McLaren would continue their “rate of development” from the end of the previous season, yet just one podium in the first four race weekends put them on the back foot again. The previous year when Red Bull were uber dominant, McLaren again started poorly with just 17 points from the first eight Grand Prix events of the season.
Once again Stella speaks about the rate of development being maintained, more interestingly the fact the team’s planned in season development budget has not been loaded into the car we will see at pre-season testing in Bahrain.
Ground effect rules changed F1 team’s mentality
“We have not changed the approach or the rate of development with a front-loading of our developments,” said Stella, “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. But this would have been the same even without the 2026 changes of regulations looming ahead.”
It appears something is changing in the way F1 teams view the progression each year from one car to another. Red Bull having dominated more than any other team in F1 history in 2023, would in yesteryear have made incremental improvements to their RB19 car believing it would be competitive for one more season.
Yet as Christian Horner stated at the lunch of the RB20, “Creativity has been strong in the team and you can see that in some of the solutions that they’ve come up with. It’s not a conservative evolution, there’s some great innovation on this car.”
Stella mirrors this thinking when he says: “We are very aware that last season, even if it had been a successful season, the margins we had mean that we had to be aggressive with the car to try and cash in as much performance as possible. 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.”
Berger: Hamiltons two problems at Mercedes
Even Mercedes had “dominant” weekends
The all new ground effect car design regulations may well have upset Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes’ fans but this all new way of extracting downforce into the F1 cars has meant there are many new avenues for the development for the teams to explore. Splitting the downforce roughly 50/50 between the upper surfaces and the underfloor has proven a fascinating conundrum for the technical wizards to get their heads around.
The levelling of the playing field was clear last year when from the Austrian Grand Prix forward, four teams were in with a shout at the start of most race weekends. This keeps all the engineers on their toes and delivers unpredictability for the fans, keeping the championships interesting for longer.
Further, there were weekends when even Mercedes were dominant with 1-2 finishes in Belgium (before Russell was disqualified) and again along the Strip in Las Vegas. “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,” Stella reflects.”
“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.
Michael Schumacher: Prison sentence issued
Radical McLaren suspension switch
So what is so radical about the all new McLaren MCL39? On these ground effect F1 cars, the most significant areas for performance gains are around the suspension and the front end of the car. This is why Adrian Newey explained this was his sole area of focus as Red Bull were planning for the big rule change ahead of the 2022 season.
The 2025 McLaren challenger has made significant changes to the suspension even though it remains a pull-rod design. Pull rod designs for most teams are preferred for this era of ground effect F1 car designs as they have a better weight distribution, because everything is run closer to the ground and the heavy components are mounted towards the bottom of the chassis.
This is especially important on ground-effect cars because the lower centre of gravity helps to reduce drag, aid cornering ability and arguably provide a better aero performance. Despite this fact only McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull, V-CARB and Sauber ran these designs in the current era. That said, Ferrari are believed to be switching to a pull-rod system this season.
The biggest difference between this year’s McLaren and last can be seen on the wishbones. On the front suspension the upper wishbone has been lowered significantly which will increase the anti-drive capabilities of the car.
Ground effect F1 cars require different braking techniques
Anti-dive is crucial on ground effect cars as the platform and underfloor must remain as constant as possible to prevent the air seals under the car being broken, which causes a spit seconds loss of downforce, causing the car to bounce or porpoise. Yet for a drive like Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo who brake late and hard, the lack of front nose dive creates a problem with the feeling they experience entering the corner.
The F1 drivers now require a far more subtle feeling when braking from high speed, if they over do it, the back end breaks away and the car starts to spin. Ferrari are said to have been working on this with Lewis Hamilton during the previous season car tests he performed in Barcelona.
Back to the McLaren suspension design. To compensate for the increased stiffness of the upper wishbone rear leg relocation, the rear leg inboard pickup point has been lowered too.
F1 sponsor under fire for pornographic ad
Baked in design for McLaren MCL39 – a risk?
Keeping things relatively simple, elements of the rear suspension have also been lowered noticeably, the intention here is to increase the anti-lift elements. This keeps the front end of the car down under acceleration, again providing for a more stable underfloor platform for the air flows.
As Lewis Hamilton explained back in 2022 when Mercedes had a car that bounced and porpoised like a dolphin at play, the suspension of the modern F1 cars is integral to their overall design enduring the season big changes are not possible in the cost cap era.
When asked why Mercedes don’t just change their car design in this area, Hamilton replied: “We can’t go any higher, actually. We’re limited by the rear suspension now.” So McLaren are making a relatively large gamble in this area, and come Bahrain it will be plain for all to see whether this roll of the dice pays off.
“Bloodstained”: F1 plan raises eyebrows
Red Bull 2026 powertrain “concern” says source
Red Bull Racing have taken the unprecedented decision to move from a customer F1 team who buy in their power units, to the first such outfit of their kind in history to attempt to develop their own for the 2026 season where new FIA specifications for the current hybrid units commence.
Whilst the move may be be considered arrogant by some, Red Bull were left little choice when their current suppliers Honda decided to pull the plug again on their F1 commitments. Having almost found themselves with no powertrain supplier following their messy divorce with long time partner’s Renault, Red Bull pulled off a last minute deal to secure a deal with Honda who themselves were coming out of a poisonous relationship with McLaren.
The beginning of the end of the Red Bull-Honda partnership came in October 2020, when the Japanese auto manufacturer announced the would leave F1 come the end of 2021. The corporate wisdom at the time was that Honda would become completely committed to electrification along with fears over the financial implications from the Covid-19 global pandemic…. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
