“The first part of the season will see us playing a bit defensively, trying to exploit the counterattack.”

Andrea Stella reached for a footballing metaphor as he looked ahead to the season opener in Australia, following nine productive days on track. Across the Barcelona Shakedown and two weeks of Pre-Season Testing in Bahrain, the team completed 1,108 laps, totalling an impressive 5,776.791km - roughly the distance from McLaren’s factory in Woking to the venue of Formula 1’s season finale in Abu Dhabi.

With just over a week to go until F1’s new era begins in Australia, the team are entering the final phase of their preparations. Back at the factory, Team Principal Stella reflected on the lessons learned in Bahrain, shared his early view on the new regulations, and offered an assessment of where McLaren Mastercard currently stands in the competitive order.

What is your assessment of the progress made during the tests in Bahrain? Are you satisfied with how the team has worked?

Andrea Stella: Yes, we are satisfied. I think we worked very well, both on the track and in Woking, to gather a lot of useful information to better understand the behaviour of the MCL40 and the new power unit. In nine days across Barcelona and Bahrain, we completed more than 1,000 laps and covered essentially all of the items on the programme we had defined before travelling to Bahrain.

From a reliability point of view, we have made good progress and, above all, we have managed to make the car faster, both in terms of the chassis and the use of the PU supplied by our partner at HPP, with whom we are working intensively to understand more and more how to exploit the potential available. Furthermore, running continuously on a demanding circuit like Sakhir allowed us to gather important information about the behaviour of the new generation of Pirelli tyres. As was the case in Barcelona, every run we did allowed us to learn something.

How are the drivers feeling ahead of the first race weekend of the 2026 season?

Andrea: Positive. Both Lando and Oscar were able to drive continuously at Sakhir and worked very hard on all of the areas that will allow them to improve the overall performance of the car. Let's not forget, a driver’s talent and ability to make the most of all the tools at their disposal has perhaps never been so important - not only in Qualifying but in all aspects of race management, from the start onwards. The quality of the integration between driver, engineers and the car will be increasingly important.

Last Friday, in the press meeting in Sakhir, you were very transparent in assessing the competitiveness of the MCL40. What have you learnt after analysing the data in more detail?

Andrea: With all the unknowns involved – in testing there are parameters that are not fully known, such as the amount of fuel on board or, particularly from this year, the way in which the available energy is used – I feel I can confirm what I said in Bahrain: the ‘usual suspects’ - strictly, in alphabetical order: Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull - are a step ahead of the competition. Within this leading group, we believe that Ferrari and Mercedes are a step ahead, although it is difficult to quantify how large the gap is. We will find out starting next week in Melbourne.

For our part, we are happy with what we have seen in our car, but we are equally aware that some of our main competitors – it is not coincidence that all three are works teams - have done an excellent job. We need to work hard to catch up and develop the car as quickly as possible. Once the cards are on the table, development will become the major challenge. To use a football metaphor, the first part of the season will see us playing a bit defensively, trying to exploit the counterattack.

Will the MCL40 we see in Melbourne be different from the one we saw in Sakhir?

Andrea: It will essentially be the same. We will have introduced some minor aerodynamic updates and will continue to work on important aspects, such as the weight of the car – this is a rather significant factor not only in absolute terms but also because going below the minimum weight will allow us to work on weight distribution. Another key factor is the exploitation of the power unit, as I mentioned earlier.

There has been a lot of talk in Sakhir about the new technical and sporting regulations in the lead-up to the first race. At this moment in time, with testing complete and the season having not yet started, what is your assessment?

Andrea: The new era of Formula 1 represents a challenge that is as exciting as it is complex, because we have perhaps never had such a significant change all at once, at least not in this century. Perhaps, there are still some details that can be ironed out to ensure that the spectacle on track lives up to the popularity our sport has achieved, that it is easily understandable to all fans - not only die-hard fans but also those who approach it more casually - and that it remains a competition in which the fastest cars and drivers compete. It will be interesting to see what happens in the first few races. There needs to be a willingness to intervene and correct any problems with an open-minded, non-dogmatic attitude.

Moreover, we have been pleased to see how all the stakeholders – the FIA, F1 and the other teams – have been working to address these issues in a constructive spirit, and with the awareness that the interests of the sport are more important than those of individuals.