3 March 2026 19:00 (UTC)
“This will be a fascinating season. The development race will be intense, and it has been harder than ever to judge the pecking order in testing”
After more than a year of designing, developing, building, and testing, the time has finally arrived to hit the track for this weekend’s season opener and get our first definitive answers as to what this year’s racing and the overall competitive picture will look like.
Across the grid, a lot of work has gone into getting to this point, with F1’s largest-ever regulations overhaul offering a full competitive reset. We got our first insight into which direction each team has gone with their design over nine days of pre-season running at the Shakedown in Barcelona and Testing in Bahrain, but it’s impossible to know where you fit in for sure until you actually go racing.
Quiet optimism is probably the best way to describe the mood back in Woking since the team returned from testing, with Andrea Stella sharing his thoughts on our preparations and performance levels last week.
Ahead of the opener, we’ve also caught up with Chief Technical Officer & Chief Designer Rob Marshall, highlighted the key points of the Albert Park Circuit, and reflected on a significant Australian Grand Prix from our history.
“We arrive at the 2026 season opener in Melbourne pleased with the successful work completed over the last few months of testing across Barcelona and Bahrain, having covered more than 1,000 laps in nine days of running. This has given the entire team satisfying learnings around the performance and reliability of the MCL40 at this foundation stage of its development.
“The car we bring to Albert Park will largely be the same specification seen in Bahrain, with some minor aerodynamic refinements. We will continue working on important aspects such as weight reduction and optimisation of weight distribution, as well as unlocking further potential from the power unit.
“This season is an exciting but complex challenge and it’s great to be back racing again, it’s the reason why we’re in the sport. We’re looking forward to finally putting the cards on the table in Melbourne and seeing where we truly stand as the first races unfold. Everybody at McLaren Mastercard has played an important role in getting the MCL40 to track, but the hard work starts now, and we embrace the task ahead.”
“As we head to Melbourne for the first race weekend of the 2026 season, following nine days of running across the Barcelona Shakedown and Pre-Season Testing in Bahrain, it’s clear to see that these cars are very complicated to operate from inside and outside the cockpit. The high driver workload means that there are many new tools that need to be optimised, and the entire team has been working extremely hard to maximise those learnings both during our time at track but also when back in Woking.
“We have spent much of our testing programme exploring the performance and capability of our car, with every lap providing valuable further understanding of the MCL40. Power unit exploitation has been a very intense focus, with multiple areas to get right on the hybrid side, such as when to recover energy and when to deploy across the different scenarios a race weekend provides. This has required many laps, but we are confident in our learnings and will continue to explore areas for further exploitation in performance.
“Now we go to Melbourne and have to dial in the optimum settings with much less time and under the pressure of a race weekend at a very different circuit to what we have experienced throughout pre-season.
“It is great to see that these regs have encouraged new designs and innovations up and down the grid. We all have the same goals, but it’s great to see we have different views on how to achieve them. With time, teams may all converge on a common design, but it would be encouraging to see them remain different and interesting for as long as possible.
“For our part, I would say that we are reasonably happy with the foundation package of the MCL40. I believe that we know the potential of what the car can do and what we want it to do, but we must remain focused and driven to ensure we continue to use our learnings as the season progresses and remain successful in our development journey.
“To be in condition to compete at the front and challenge for the race victory, you will need to have done a very good job on managing the power unit. This is something you need to be on top of. Overall, this will be a fascinating season. The development race will be intense, and it has been harder than ever to judge the pecking order in testing. I think we are in the leading group alongside some very strong competition, such as Ferrari, Mercedes, and Red Bull, but there are lots of elements throughout the 2026 season that could provide some surprises. We’re looking forward to getting the season underway.”
Albert Park is an all-action circuit, so we’re likely to see racing throughout the full 5.275km stretch of road, especially as the grid gets to grips with the new cars and regulations.
While we don’t yet know the full impact that those will have on racing in 2026, there are still sections of each circuit that we’ll expect to be among the more action-packed. In Australia, that will be Turns 9 through 13, the fastest section of the track.
Starting with two sweeping turns, cars head into the high-speed left-right chicane at Turns 11 and 12 at roughly 180mph, then brake heavily into Turn 13, where overtaking is possible.
Another spot that tends to prove decisive at Albert Park is Turn 1, where you’ll often see overtakes at the end of the main straight, and Turn 3, a heavy braking zone where we’ve also seen moves made in the past.
With the 2026 cars possessing less than their processors, it will be interesting to see how they tackle Albert Park’s traditionally slippery surface, and a good indicator of how much of a difference the drivers can make in this new era.
Performances were strong throughout Shakedown and Pre-Season Testing, with Oscar and Lando completing 1,108 laps between them, while making regular appearances in the top two. Speaking following the second week of Pre-Season Testing, Andrea surmised that McLaren Mastercard were likely among the top four teams, though he believed that Mercedes and Red Bull were a “step ahead of the competition”.
06 - 08 MARCH
As McLaren approaches a historic 1000th Grand Prix, we will be celebrating some of the best races in our history at each circuit on the calendar and hearing from those who were there. This week, we’re looking back at Jenson Button’s victory in the 2012 Australian Grand Prix.
Jenson Button’s affinity for Albert Park was well known coming into the 2012 season. He’d had Poles with Honda and Brawn, victory with the latter in 2009, and a win for McLaren in 2010.
In a field with a record six World Champions, he made it a hat-trick of Australian Grand Prix wins in 2012, and never looked like losing after getting a rocket start from P2, when he passed McLaren teammate and Polesitter Lewis Hamilton into Turn 1. Jenson ran a regulation Soft>Medium>Medium strategy, making his first stop on Lap 16. By the time of the second stop, on Lap 36, he’d built up an 11s lead over Hamilton, allowing the team to execute a confident and rapid double-shuffle.
Unluckily for Hamilton, a Safety Car moments later relegated him to P3, and allowed Sebastian Vettel to hound Jenson at the restart. The Briton, however, didn’t put a foot wrong over the final 16 racing laps, establishing a comfortable three-second cushion and matching his pace with the chasing pack. Two laps from home, he set the fastest lap, and then cruised to the Chequered Flag to start the season in the best possible way.
“The weekend balance was dominated by understeer, giving drivers a stable car, which was a strength for Jenson,” recalled Tom Stallard, Jenson’s Performance Engineer for that race in 2012. “Still, we had to raise rear ride height and tyre pressure at the front to get performance in Qualifying, but this gave us a race car which was strong in high speed.
“We qualified second, behind Lewis, but got a great launch and were in the lead by T1. Managing front tyres was always a strength for Jenson, which played a key part, and he was untouchable in race pace that day.”
Each race week, we’ll be putting the same question to Lando and Oscar or two team members to find out just how similar (or different) they really are. The question could be anything: from their favourite corner on the F1 calendar, to their ultimate pre-race anthem, or even the one food they absolutely refuse to eat on race week.
This week, we asked them what existing circuit they would love to see added to the Formula 1 calendar.
Lando: Nordschleife would definitely be one. I can’t imagine what it would be like in an F1 car. Mount Panorama in Australia would be another. It is one I have done on the sim loads of times. I don’t know if it has ever been on the F1 calendar, but I want to drive an F1 car there.
Oscar: Hockenheim.
Follow all of the action this weekend via the McLaren Racing App, available to download on Android and iOS.
