McLaren to skip F1 testing

Norris and Piastri looking gloomy with a black and orange edited square background — Photo: © IMAGO

McLaren

McLaren to skip F1 testing

McLaren will miss one of the 11 days of testing

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Thursday 22 January 2026 18:51 Updated: 21:23

McLaren F1 boss Andrea Stella has revealed that McLaren will miss the first day of 2026 pre-season testing.

With the start of the season fast approaching, teams are scrambling to get their new machinery ready on time, and a number of outfits have already unveiled their 2026 cars and power units.

Teams will then have 11 days worth of pre-season testing, as F1 attempts to give them as much time as possible ahead of the start of the season because of the wholesale regulation changes that are coming to F1 this year.

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The first five of those 11 days of testing comes in the shape of a private shakedown event for teams at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya next week, with the event taking place between January 26-30.

But now McLaren team principal Stella has revealed that his team will miss the first of those five days in Barcelona, and will instead start their preparations for the season on the second, or maybe even third day of the Barcelona shakedown.

"We plan to start testing either in day two or day three, so we will not be testing in day one," Stella revealed in an interview with BBC Sport.

"We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development, because every day of development, every day of design was adding a little bit of performance.

"If you are early on track you will have the reassurance of knowing what you need to know as soon as possible. But at the same time it means that you might have committed to the design and the realisation of the car relatively early, so you will have a compromise against development time and ultimate performance."

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Will McLaren be challenging for the championship in 2026?

The rules reset makes it impossible for us to predict at this stage where exactly each team will be in the pecking order, but McLaren are likely going to find it tougher going in 2026.

McLaren dominated the 2025 season, winning 14 of a possible 24 grands prix, and claiming both championships in the year.

The upcoming rules overhaul may well see a shake up in the competitive order in F1, and that can only be bad news for the team who had the fastest car in 2025.

But they will hope that they have done enough over the last 18 months in preparation for these new regulations to be competitive once more, and have their supremely talented driver lineup of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri regularly challenging for race wins once more.

On top of this, they are using Mercedes power units once again, and Mercedes are the team who are rumoured to be best placed to master the upcoming power unit changes.

McLaren pre-season testing Andrea Stella