McLaren thinks it can grab 2025 F1 chance without sacrificing 2026

The McLaren Formula 1 team is confident it can make a push to defend its world championship without hurting its chances for 2026’s major rules reset.

From January, teams are allowed to enter their 2026 car designs in the wind tunnel, which has given them an additional headache as they approach the upcoming campaign as well.

Under F1’s budget cap, and with further aero restrictions in place depending on a team’s position in the constructors’ championship, squads will have to carefully weigh up the amount of resources they are still willing to invest in the last year of the current rules cycle while also attacking the new rules to start the 2026 era on the front foot.

For teams in the midfield, that choice appears relatively straightforward, as there is a much bigger upside to throwing the kitchen sink in 2026 and making a much bigger leap then.

But for teams already fighting at the front, where diminishing returns of these mature regulations are making lap time gains ever harder to find, the choice is more difficult. 

McLaren, which claimed its first constructors’ crown in 26 years last year, is pretty adamant that it can have its cake and eat it too, chasing decent overall gains with its 2025 car without leaving anything on the table for 2026.

And it is under no illusions that it will somehow be able to take its foot off the throttle in 2025 just because it happened to be on top in 2024, engineering technical director Neil Houldey tells Motorsport.com.

“I think there’s an opportunity to win a championship in 2025 and in 2026, and of course, we want to do both,” said Houldey. “You’re not going to win 2025 without [development]. You’ve got competition of Red Bull, Mercedes are going to have a quick car. You’ve got Ferrari who are quick.

“There’s no reason why these teams aren’t going to be generating a lot of performance next season, and we’ve got to be there and be doing the same if we want to win the championship, which is obviously the aim.”

Equally, having the best car as the regulations run towards the end of its life cycle doesn’t mean McLaren has run out of things to improve, as it has found the opposite to be true.

The Woking team did overall have the best car across the second half of 2024 but it wasn’t as dominant as sometimes has been portrayed.

“At the moment, the focus for 2025 is everything,” Houldey said. “And actually that’s not just about the car, that’s about the whole team. We know that the car can go faster. We can develop the car further.

“We know as a team every area can find ways of being more effective, more efficient, generating more and more performance in their own individual groups as well. So 2025 for us is the same as any other year, and an opportunity to show what McLaren are now capable of doing.”