McLaren will delay its first run during the Barcelona F1 tests.

From January 26th to 30th, the F1 will make its return to the Barcelona circuit in Catalonia. The program includes five days of private, closed-door testing, during which the teams will be able to begin the first real laps with their new cars in preparation for the 2026 season. While Classic Ferrari for sale For example, it announced that the final version of its SF-26 would only be presented during the first weekend of competition in Melbourne. McLaren made a different choice.

"The car is now at AVL in Austria for dyno testing," Andrea Stella revealed this on Wednesday, January 21st, to the British journalist Adam Cooper. This is now common practice in F1, allowing us to validate certain fundamental car systems far more thoroughly than we can by testing some of these subsystems, such as the gearbox, on a dedicated test bench like the one we have here at the MTC. It's a facility, AVL, that we've been using for some time, and that's where the car is at the moment.

A complete discovery for McLaren in Barcelona

Specifically, Andrea Stella explains that while teams will have to select three days to run within these five available days, McLaren could choose to delay its arrival on track as much as possible, starting only on Wednesday. “Next, the car will be in Barcelona for the on-track shakedown. This will take place directly during the test. We plan to start testing either on day two or day three.” confirms the person concerned. So we won't be testing on day one. We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development. We're allowed to test for three of the five days available in Barcelona, ​​and then we'll start, as I said, either on day two or day three, and we'll test for three days.

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In summary, while Audi has already completed a whopping 200 km of testing on the Barcelona circuit during January, and the German team plans to take to the track as early as 9 a.m. on the first day of testing, McLaren will be the most patient team, even discovering the behavior of its MCL40 for the very first time on this occasion. Without any prior private testing. A true discovery for Lando Norris et Oscar piastri, this new car This will be highly anticipated, as it enabled the Papayas to achieve the driver-constructor double in 2025. Will the world champions successfully navigate the regulatory changes? We'll get our first answers in a week's time in Barcelona.