McLaren bets early 2026 switch will pay off as Red Bull takes opposite path

McLaren is confident its strategic gamble to halt 2025 car development early in favor of focusing on the 2026 challenger will be validated next season. While rivals like Red Bull continued to upgrade their current cars until late in the year, McLaren believes the performance gains found in just weeks of 2026 simulator work far outweigh the diminishing returns of refining an already mature 2025 design.

Why it matters:

The 2026 season introduces all-new technical regulations, making the development approach teams take now critical for establishing a competitive pecking order. McLaren's early pivot represents a high-stakes bet on the future, directly contrasting with Red Bull's strategy of maximizing the present championship fight, even at a potential cost to next year's project.

The details:

• McLaren Engineering Technical Director Neil Houldey stated the team was finding performance gains of around 30 milliseconds in weeks on the 2026 car—gains that would have been extremely difficult to achieve with further 2025 development.
• He argued that continuing with the 2025 car would have meant starting the 2026 season "slower than we're going to go in."
• Red Bull Team Principal Laurent Mekies has acknowledged his team's late-season upgrades on the RB21 could mean they "pay the price" in the early stages of 2026, but viewed the work as valuable for refining team processes and unlocking performance.
• Houldey suggested part of Red Bull's late-season surge came from better exploiting their existing car's setup, an area where McLaren felt it had already maximized performance.

The big picture:

This strategic divergence highlights the perennial balancing act in Formula 1: fighting for the current championship versus preparing for the next regulatory cycle. McLaren, having secured the 2025 drivers' title with Lando Norris, felt it had reached the performance ceiling of the current rules and that resources were better spent on the fresh challenge of 2026.

What's next:

The success of McLaren's gamble will only become clear when the 2026 cars hit the track. The team is focusing on its development processes rather than specific performance targets, aiming to maintain the momentum that returned it to championship contention. With pre-season testing beginning in late January, the first true indication of which strategy paid off is just weeks away.