Another F1 title winner? McLaren's MCL40 car design explained

McLaren have explained the design of their 2026 F1 challenger, the MCL40.

On Monday, world champions McLaren revealed the livery they will race in during the upcoming 2026 season as they look to defend the constructors’ and drivers’ titles they secured last year.

The MCL40 debuted on track in a one-off stealth test livery for the behind closed doors Barcelona shakedown, but will run in its official 2026 colours during the first of two three-day pre-season tests in Bahrain, which begin on Wednesday.

Speaking during the team’s online season launch held at the Bahrain International Circuit, McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall provided further details about the Woking squad’s latest F1 challenger.

“If you start from the front, the new front wing is still sort of arrowhead like the previous generation, but it's a bit lower and they have a much broader and wider footplate, end plate, than we used to have. And also the front wing is now actuated, much like the old DRS,” Marshall explained.

“These new cars have got a straight line mode where both the front and rear wings will move their flaps to reduce the drag on the car and help the car get down the straights faster. There's quite a lot of freedom on how you actuate that, I think we'll see different solutions from different cars on the grid.

“Moving a bit further back, you've got the nose, the crash structure, which is basically from here to here. That's all new again. The regulations have changed this year where we need to make sure that after a small shunt, that’s enough to knock the front wing off, maybe the front half of the nose, the remaining part still serves its function as saving the driver in a secondary crash against another barrier.

“So that's significantly complicated the design work going into the nose. Then we've got front suspension, again last year's front suspension was I think very innovative and so is this, we've done quite a few changes which I hope benefit us.”

Marshall continued: “As we go rearward, we've got the main body of the chassis. Again all new regulations, much tougher homologation requirements, so the crash tests and the squeezes that go into the chassis are quite brutal this year and a lot of effort and research has gone into trying to make the car able to withstand those.

“The car is so much shorter, so a lot of the packaging of where radiators and electrical boxes, which were typically scattered around the car, finding homes for those has been very difficult, there's just less space to put them all. What's helped us is the fuel tank is a bit smaller, we're going to use less fuel in the race.

“From an aerodynamic point of view, gone are the very sort of curved underfloors that we had with last year's cars. We're faced with a much more flat-bottom car like we had in previous generations.

“As we go rearward again, our rear suspension is actually a bit of an iteration of last year's, we're quite very happy with what we did last year and so we just built upon that, redesigned the gearbox to make it lighter and shorter for the obvious reasons.

“And then the rear wing is similar-ish to last year's, and the actuation mechanism is a bit like old school DRS, but it's now mounted on two pylons and it will now operate in conjunction with the front wing.”

Asked what the most challenging aspect of the MCL40 design was, Marshall replied: “I think the most challenging aspect has been coordinating the design and timing it with last year really, when we were obviously fighting for one championship and looking to get our best foot forward for the next.

“So deciding when to put all your effort into this is probably the hardest thing, actually.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella is confident the development decisions taken by his side will ultimately pay off.

“We needed to reflect on the resources that we invested on pursuing the championship and onto the new car,” he said. “We think we have achieved the right balance, so we are optimistic that the MCL40 will be a strong contender.”