As the curtains fell on the first day of pre-season testing, Lando Norris topped the charts with an impressive lap time of 1:30:430. This lap showed that McLaren are not playing around this season and are gunning for another Constructors’ Championship and the Drivers’ Championship as well.
McLaren team principal, Zak Brown was particularly impressed with the entire team, not because they had the fastest time, but because everything went the way they expected.
Zak Brown and McLaren happy after 1st day of F1 pre-season testing
The first day of pre-season testing is very important as it is the first time the teams are able to compare their cars’ to their competitors. After day 1 of pre-season testing, Zak Brown gave some insight as to how much work the team has put in to develop the MCL39.
“We definitely didn’t put it (MCL38) away after Abu Dhabi and polish it and just roll it out here,” said Brown. “It has a lot of innovation on it.”
“What I’m liking is the car is doing what we thought it would do,” he said. “Some of the innovations were bold so we needed to make sure they were going to work and not be issues.”
“So we’re kind of ticking off the ‘yes that works’, ‘yes that’s going according to plan’. It’s way too early to see what the grid looks like but what we’re doing is getting through our run plan, it’s going according to plan, so I’m very happy with that.”
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Zak Brown is very happy that things are going according to plan. Although the fastest lap does not matter during pre-season testing, Lando’s lap that placed him on top of the standings will put a smile on the folks back at the McLaren factory in Woking.
During pre-season testing, teams, especially the top ones, don’t show their true pace as they want to keep certain parts of the car hidden until the first Grand Prix. They call this sandbagging. So with most of the teams sandbagging, we cannot truly predict which team is going to come up on top at Melbourne. We will have to wait for the race weekend to get a better understanding of which teams are Championship contenders this season.
Is McLaren’s strategy compromising 2026 performance by prioritizing 2025?
With McLaren going all in for the 2025 season, there is one question that needs to be asked. Is it smart?
It is well known that from the 2026 season, the FIA are introducing new technical regulations for Formula 1. We will see entirely new concepts of the car from all 10 teams next year. So given that these regulation changes have the potential to completely flip the pecking order of the grid, should McLaren focus more on their 2026 challenger?
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Here’s what Zak Brown had to say about that:
“Probably, some teams maybe [won’t] put as much effort into ’25 because they don’t think they have a chance and therefore double down on ’26,” he said. “So that’ll be interesting to see what that looks like in ’26.
“Then you have ourselves and I’m sure many others [who are thinking] before we think about ’26, let’s make sure we optimise ’25 because we have a chance. So we are working on both.
“Our ’26 car has been in the wind tunnel, our ’25 car, they kind of bounce back and forth. So we’re working on both.”
“Then I think we’ve got to see how we start the season, how much development do we think we have left and then kind of react accordingly as to how we balance our resources.”
We already know that some teams like Williams and Alpine are going to focus more on developing the 2026 challenger over their car for the 2025 season. So will this give them an advantage for next year? Only time will tell.
Do you think that McLaren is making the right move by going all in for the 2025 season and potentially compromising on their 2026 performance? Post your thoughts in the comments section below.
