McLaren didn’t need to turn a wheel in Barcelona on Monday to dominate the morning conversation.
While pre-season running for 2026 got underway in Spain, the reigning champions stayed in the garage by design — and instead rolled out a stark, all-black testing livery that instantly cut through the usual first-day noise of aero rakes and installation laps. It’s a striking departure from the papaya that’s become a modern McLaren signature, and it landed with the kind of impact teams normally chase with a fastest lap.
The decision to skip Day One wasn’t a last-minute wobble, either. Team principal Andrea Stella had already briefed a small group of media earlier in the month that McLaren wouldn’t be running on the opening day. The plan, he said, was simple: maximise development time before committing the car to track mileage.
“We will not be testing in day one,” Stella explained. “We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development. You are allowed to test three days over the five that are available in Barcelona. We will start from either day two or day three and we will test for three days.”
In other words, McLaren’s content to let everyone else burn through the first headlines — and arrive later with a package it feels is closer to where it needs to be.
That posture makes sense in a winter where “new season” feels like an understatement. The 2026 reset is substantial: lighter, smaller cars, active aerodynamics, and a tweaked engine formula all landing at once. Testing time is at a premium for everyone, but for the teams at the front it’s also a question of what you want to learn and when. There’s little value in collecting data on a configuration you already know you’re about to supersede.
The irony is that even on a day McLaren sat out, it still managed to set the tone. The black livery — plainly a test scheme rather than a season identity — read like a statement of intent: low-drama, high-focus, here to get on with the job. It’s also a neat reminder that in modern F1, controlling the narrative is part of performance. While rivals scrambled for the first meaningful aero correlation of a new era, McLaren ensured the cameras — and the paddock — still came looking for it.
Of course, this is McLaren arriving in 2026 with very different expectations to the ones it carried not so long ago. The team starts the year as reigning world champion, having taken both the Constructors’ and Drivers’ titles last season. Lando Norris’ first championship was sealed the hard way, edging Max Verstappen by just two points after a tense run to the finish. That sort of finale doesn’t just crown a champion; it changes how a team is treated. Every decision gets read as either a flex or a fear.
McLaren will insist Monday’s call is neither — simply the most efficient use of limited track time. But it also underlines how aggressively teams are now managing the thin margins at the start of a new rules cycle. If you believe you’ve got a strong baseline, you protect your development window. If you fear you don’t, you chase mileage. McLaren’s choice tells its own story, even before the MCL40 completes a lap.
CEO Zak Brown, speaking at the end of last season, sounded less interested in basking in what McLaren just achieved and more intrigued by how quickly it can be taken away.
“Now we got to do it all over again,” Brown said. “And it’ll be tough, because, as I say, the worst team in Formula 1 is really good.
“There’s no more small teams anymore. There’s none of those minnow teams that we all grew up with.
“Everyone’s running at the cost cap. The sport’s unbelievably healthy and, yeah, it’s been very enjoyable, and looking forward to.”
That’s the reality of the modern grid: the gaps are tight, the tools are regulated, and the simplest errors can snowball over a season. A team can’t “outspend” a slow start anymore — it has to out-think it, and it has to do so inside a budget and a wind tunnel allowance.
McLaren’s MCL40 will be officially launched on 9 February. Until then, the black test look is likely to do exactly what it’s already done in Barcelona: keep attention fixed on Woking even when the car isn’t on track.
The first real answers, though, won’t come from paint. They’ll come when McLaren finally hits the circuit and the stopwatch starts telling the truth — in a year where everyone is effectively starting again, including the champions.
