McLaren to miss first day of F1 2026 testing - here’s why

McLaren will miss the opening day of F1’s behind closed doors shakedown in Barcelona next week to maximise development time.

All 11 F1 teams will be able to run their new 2026 challengers across a week of private testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya between 26-30 January.

While the effective shakedown will take place over the course of five days, teams are only permitted to run on three of those days and have the freedom to choose which days they prefer.

Speaking to media including Crash.net, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella confirmed his side are planning to join the collective test on either day two or day three.

“We plan to start testing either on day two or day three, so we will not be testing in day one. We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development,” Stella said.

“You all may know that you are allowed to test three days over the five that are available in Barcelona and then we will start from either day two or day three and we will test for three days.”

Asked if it was always McLaren’s plan to miss the opening day of running, Stella replied: “Actually, this was always going to be plan A. There’s also so much of a change that we don't need to be necessarily the first on track.

“We wanted to give as much time as possible for development because every day of development, every day of design was adding a little bit of performance. This also means that if you are early on track, you will have the reassurance of knowing what you need to know as soon as possible.

“But at the same time, it means that you might have committed to the design and the realisation of the car relatively early. So, you will have a compromise against development time and ultimate performance.

“Obviously, there will be updates pretty much for every car between testing in Barcelona in the first race. But we thought that in the economy of a season, it was important to start and launch the car in the most competitive package and configuration.

“That's why we pushed all the timing to the limit, but within a very manageable limit. So at the moment we are on plan to be testing on day two and we didn't feel any urge to plan for testing on day one.”

MCL40 won't change much before race one

Following the Barcelona shakedown, there will be two official pre-season F1 tests held in Bahrain in mid-February before the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on 8 March. 

McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall said that with regards to the design of the MCL40 “between Barcelona and Melbourne, I think what you see is probably pretty much what we'll bring to the first race.”

“A lot of our effort will be into understanding this,” Marshall added. “Also, we need to take into account what the opposition are up to. We need to be inspired by what they may or may not achieve and may or may not show us.

“We really are going to have to be very focused on getting our heads around this car. It's very complicated, it’s all new. There’s a lot of stuff that we need to dial in and tune in. 

“I think bringing a lot of new stuff to it, early doors, would complicate stuff and I think we are better off understanding out platform before we get too keen on redesigning it before it’s turned a wheel.”