Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Friday, 30 January

Find out what happened on Day 3 of the Pre-Season Shakedown in Barcelona, and get the thoughts of McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, and Technical Director, Engineering, Neil Houldey.

Today concludes the Barcelona Pre-Season Shakedown, and a very productive first few days of running for the MCL40. Over the previous three days of running, McLaren Mastercard Formula 1 Team have made strong progress covering a total of 1,355.187km, with both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri sharing driving duties behind the wheel.

After providing a good baseline understanding of the team’s 2026 challenger from Wednesday and Thursday’s time on track, the conclusive day of Formula 1’s Barcelona Shakedown has proved productive with 166 laps completed between Lando and Oscar, bringing the team’s total for the week to 291 laps. 

This has allowed the team to learn more about the MCL40, as each run is invaluable in providing further understanding and development across all areas of the car. Friday’s running has also provided the opportunity to start to play with setup changes, while also building overall reliability. 

We recognise that there is still much to review and many opportunities for learning, including how to exploit the potential of the power unit on this generation of Formula 1 car, both from a driving and setup point of view. This delivers the team with lots of work to do back at Woking, as we analyse all the data and grow stronger from our learnings to prepare for the Bahrain Pre-Season Test in 10 days

Lando Norris

Laps	86 (248.860 miles/400.502 km)
Best lap time	1m16.594s (2nd)
Total Shakedown laps	163 (471.677 miles / 759.091km)

“Today was a valuable day of learning, and it felt great to be back in the car. I’m grateful to the entire team for their hard work and support. It’s a pleasure to drive another McLaren this year, and running the No.1 for the first time was a special moment for all of us throughout the Shakedown.  

“We’ve identified opportunities and areas to improve, and we’re excited to see what we can do back in Woking as we prepare for Bahrain. We have plenty of additional things to learn this week in the simulator, alongside our Simulator and Development Drivers, and I'm looking forward to getting to work on those. These cars definitely require a new way of thinking and driving and the more time spent working on those, the better prepared we will be for the start of the season.

“Thanks to everybody involved for making it a strong day of running to wrap up the week. Time now for a few days off before getting right back into it at the start of next week, before we get back in the car in Bahrain. I can’t wait to get going again next time.” 

Oscar Piastri

Laps	80 (231.498 miles/372.560 km)
Best lap time	1m17.446s (4th)
Total Shakedown Laps	128 (370.397 miles / 596.096km)

“Today was a much smoother day than our first two. It was good to get a solid number of laps on the board and settle into a rhythm. I’m starting to feel what the car is really like, and we’ve already tried a variety of configurations and settings to understand how it behaves for a race weekend. Overall, the priority this week has been clear: understand the car and improve it. 

“There’s still plenty to learn, especially on the power unit side. Together with HPP, we’re working to deepen our understanding to extract the most performance. The feedback from both me and Lando is proving valuable. We’ve also identified some differences from last year across the chassis with the car carrying more downforce, so getting used to that balance has been a key focus.

“Looking ahead to Bahrain, we feel well prepared. There haven’t been many major surprises in how I need to drive and ensuring everything works as expected remains the biggest focus. We’ll review what matched our expectations, what didn’t, and anything interesting we’ve uncovered so far.

“Overall, it’s been a successful step in the right direction to start the year off, so thanks to all of the team for working hard to prepare the car and make it happen.” 

Neil Houldey
Technical Director, Engineering 

“We’ve wrapped a demanding but rewarding Barcelona Shakedown, and we're pleased with the overall outcome and learnings we can take away from each individual lap recorded. Following our full-car dyno work in Austria, the first two days in Barcelona were about preparing the car and while some small issues cost us mileage across Day 1 and Day 2 of running, the final day delivered exactly what we needed with both drivers completing extensive laps without any reliability concerns.

“Our shakedown checklist remains familiar, but the new power unit regulations have added complexity, especially around deployment and harvesting. We did what we could in the simulator, but there’s no substitute for track time, where close collaboration with Mercedes-Benz High Performance Powertrains has helped us refine solutions. We also validated the new straight and cornering mode and focused on understanding the best operational approach. 

“The data haul has been invaluable. Telemetry from running the car will sharpen simulator realism now that the drivers have experienced the real thing. We completed meaningful aero work, including flow visualisation, and gathered extensive references to benchmark our next development steps.  

“As a team both trackside and in Woking, we’ve packed a lot into this week, and we’ll be heading to Bahrain for Pre-Season Testing intent on arriving with a faster, more reliable car than the one we started with this week.”