racingnews365.com·
McLaren address questioned car development approach after Max Verstappen title fight
McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall has addressed the development
approach of last year’s Formula 1 car, insisting it did not suffer
from the team switching focus to 2026. The Woking-based outfit
dominated the first half of the F1 season last year, on its way to
a second consecutive constructors’ title and Lando Norris becoming
world champion. Despite both championships being secured, Max
Verstappen and Red Bull made staggering strides on McLaren in the
latter stages. Due to its dominance, McLaren switched complete
focus to its 2026 car before Red Bull, while the latter introduced
major upgrades to the RB22 late in the season. This saw McLaren’s
huge performance advantage completely disappear, to the extent that
Verstappen reduced his title deficit from 104 points to just two in
the closing rounds. As a result, questions arose over whether the
British squad had aborted development of its 2025 car too early, in
favour of preparing for the new power unit regulations. Marshall
has insisted that this was not the case and that McLaren is
confident it chose the right approach for the final year of the
ground-effect era. Asked how its 2025 title pursuit impacted
development of the MCL40, Marshall told select media including
RacingNews365 : "In terms of the development of last year’s car
through the season, obviously it gets to a stage where you need to
tail off the design and think about the new car. "And that probably
started earlier than it would have in a normal year because of the
regulation changes. But equally, we had started this car so much
earlier than we normally would that a lot of the initial prep and
groundwork was already done. "So yeah, we lifted off on last year’s
car to focus on this. But I wouldn’t say it suffered. I think
clearly there was an interesting race at the end of last year. "You
could argue that others maybe kept pressing on with its ’25 car
longer than we did, but I think we probably did the right thing in
the end."
