On Thursday, McLaren Racing became the first F1 team to reveal their 2025 challenger – the MCL39 – at a filming day at Silverstone. However, though the Woking-based team enjoyed a strong end to their 2024 season with a competitive MCL38, team boss Andrea Stella claims that “pretty much every part” of the car has been changed to produce another title winner.
An “innovative” MCL39
The MCL39 features several visible changes, including to the front and rear suspension. Other visible changes include a wider airbox inlet and modifications to the sidepod inlets and shape to bring the MCL39 in line with the RB20 and SF-24 run by 2024 title rivals Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari respectively. The MCL39 will also feature a new monocoque.
However, Stella claims modifications to McLaren’s newest challenger go far beyond those which can be easily seen. While speaking at the filming day, Stella described the MCL39 as “innovative” and stated that the modifications would allow, among other things, “technical opportunities” for further development of the car.
“This car is innovative. 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 that the team had opted for these modifications to improve the car’s performance, and highlighted the expected benefit to the aerodynamics and grip. He added that almost every part of the MCL39 had been subject to some degree of optimisation.
“Most of the time these serve the purpose 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.”
Expected improvements to aerodynamic efficiency
The McLaren boss explained that the team had drastically redesigned the MCL39 primarily to improve aerodynamic efficiency. He added that McLaren sought to give aerodynamicists more freedom to achieve specific gains by reducing the size of key components.
Stella indicated that the team had also considered aerodynamic factors when modifying the front and rear suspensions of the 2025 car, despite the primary focus of these changes being to improve overall tyre management.
“Obviously there’s some tunings on the suspensions as well, in terms of the mechanical grip, but nowadays the suspension tends to serve aerodynamics,” he said.
“Everything feels normal” – Norris
Despite the significant changes to the MCL39, Lando Norris is optimistic about the trajectory of the car’s performance in the 2025 season.
The 25-year-old was the first of McLaren’s drivers to test the MCL39 during the promotional run. Despite cold conditions, limited running to 200km, and demo tyres preventing a meaningful assessment, Norris expressed satisfaction with the MCL39’s performance.
“It felt normal, I’d say. So that’s been the first good step, because they have been quite innovative with some of the designs and some things that they tried to attack with the car this year.”
He stated that the innovative nature of the upgrades had made the design process tricky, but praised the team for pushing boundaries and exploring “more areas” for development.
“That has caused trickiness amongst the design, all of those sides of things, but the guys have done a very good job to try and explore more areas and push boundaries.”
Norris explained that while he had been “a little bit nervous” before testing the car on track, he had found everything to be “working as it should.”
“You’re always a little bit nervous that things are not going to be perfect when you try them, and how well they are going to match the track and wind tunnel, all these things put together.
“But I think everything’s working as it should, and everything feels normal.”
Upgrades expected for early 2025 races
While Norris appears satisfied with the MCL39 in its current form, McLaren will likely continue to update the car ahead of pre-season testing in Bahrain. However, while the team expects to make changes to the wings, team boss Stella believes they will retain most of what was on display at Silverstone. This, however, is not due to the team’s need to balance their resources between the 2025 developments and those for 2026 as Stella explained that the team would employ a development plan that was not dissimilar to those used in previous years.
“We have not changed the approach or the rate of development with a front loading of our developments.
“We’ve just tried to go as fast as possible in terms of developing the car, which means there will be some updates during the early races of the season. But this would have been the same even without a ’26 change of regulations looming ahead.”
“Aggressive” development needed to keep advantage over other team
The McLaren team boss added that the team was aware of the need to maximise their performance in 2025 with the MCL39. He explained that though the Woking-based team had enjoyed a successful 2024 season, the small margin between their performance and that of their rivals required aggressive development of the MCL39 to keep their competitiveness.
“We’re just going as fast as possible because we’re very aware that last season, even if it’s been a successful season, the margins we have from a performance point of view meant we needed to be aggressive with the car and try to cash in as much performance as possible.
“I think those margins were so small, that considering the development other teams would have had, had we not gone as fast as possible in terms of development, we might very quickly lose any advantage that we had.”
However, while Stella claimed that McLaren had “kept full gas” in the development of the MCL39, they would have to wait to see if their development had been greater than that of their competitors for 2025.
“Definitely we kept full gas in terms of development, and we will see if we have been able to develop more than our competitors from the 2024 to 2025 car.”
MCL39 “a decent step forward”
Despite this, Stella expressed satisfaction with his team’s progress and stated that he expected the 2025 car to make a “decent step forward,” at least on paper.
“I’m pleased we could keep the sort of rate of development we have had over the last two years. The 2025 car on the paper should be a decent step forward.”
The McLaren Team Principal added after careful evaluation, the team had opted for a “relatively challenging approach” to the 2025 which maximised improvements to the MCL39’s aerodynamic efficiency.
“We evaluated very carefully. We needed be conscious as to how much we wanted to innovate but we went for a relatively challenging approach in terms of the innovation in this car. This is primarily about aerodynamic efficiency.”
Stella confident McLaren has two drivers “in a position to succeed”
As reported by the BBC, Stella believes that “the pressure is on the team” to give their drivers a competitive car.
“If anything the pressure is on the team to ensure we have a car that can deliver podiums from the start.”
He said that he was confident that Norris – who missed out on his maiden drivers’ championship by 63 points – could mount a season-long title challenge once he had a suitably competitive car. He recalled the British driver’s strong performances from the 2024 Miami Grand Prix onward and noted his “impressive” growth throughout the season.
“I saw Lando growing through the season at a very fast rate.
“He was already an incredible driver and he showed it immediately, in Miami as soon as he has the car to win he delivered. And in terms of points he scored as much as Max from Miami onwards.
“The ability to grow has been quite impressive, the battle with Max in Austria and Austin, and Mexico, think how much he adapted.”
Stella also expressed optimism over Oscar Piastri’s performance in 2025. With both Norris and Piastri reportedly starting the new season on equal footing, Stella claims that McLaren has “two drivers in a position to succeed.”
