McLaren boss Andrea Stella has explained the team’s “innovative” approach to creating its 2025 Formula 1 challenger.
The Woking-based F1 outfit launched its MCL39 machine on Thursday at the Silverstone circuit in a resplendent papaya camo livery.
This year’s Woking weapon succeeds the impressive MCL38, which for large parts of the 2024 F1 campaign was the class of the field en route to the team’s first Constructors’ title in 26 years.
Still, that hasn’t stopped McLaren from an attempt to push the development envelope in the off-season and Team Principal Stella has explained the changes being targeted on the MCL39.
Speaking during McLaren’s filming day at Silverstone, Stella said McLaren set out to improve upon the MCL38 by optimising “downforce and aerodynamic efficiency,” adding that the 2025 car “is innovative.”
Stella added: “It is a car in which we tried to raise the bar in many areas, including the fundamental layout, something that definitely we evaluated carefully, because the MCL38 was already a competitive car, so we needed to be conscious, considerate as to how much we wanted to innovate, but ultimately we went for a relatively challenging approach in terms of how much of innovation is in this car.
“This is predominantly to gain aerodynamic efficiency, to allow our colleagues in aerodynamics to have volumes to use for their geometries,” Stella continued.
“At the same time, we still wanted to make some improvements in terms of interaction with the tyres, especially with long-run pace.
“I think they fundamentally are the two areas.
“Obviously, there’s some tuning on the suspension as well, in terms of the mechanical grip, but nowadays the suspension, they pretty much tend to serve aerodynamics.”
Every part of the McLaren 2025 F1 machine ‘subject to optimisation’
Probed further on changes made to the layout from the MCL38 to the MCL39, Stella explained that there have been wholesale changes to the layout throughout the new McLaren.
“Pretty much every fundamental component of the layout has been subject to some innovation in order to gain, sometimes not only by marginal gains, some technical opportunities for development,” Stella explained.
“Most of the time this is to then serve the purposes of aerodynamic requirements or in some other cases for mechanical grip.
“In reality, pretty much from the front wing to the gearbox crash structure, everything has been subject to optimisation, sometimes incrementally, sometimes actually quite substantially.”
Stella’s words suggest McLaren has taken a big swing with the MCL39 and only time will tell if this is a fruitful pursuit.
For instance, the Red Bull RB20 succeeded 2023’s dominant RB19 in a similarly impressive fashion at the start of last season before pushing development ran the Milton Keynes-based squad into trouble.
After finishing 2024 with arguably the strongest package, does making “fundamental” changes to the MCL38 mean McLaren runs this risk of a similar fate to Red Bull with the MCL39?
Stella and company will be hoping the answer is no.
READ MORE – McLaren ‘realistic’ going into F1 2025 despite conviction over MCL39 improvement
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