McLaren shuns day one testing as Stella prioritises car development

The reigning world champions have revealed they will sit out the first day of preseason testing in Barcelona next week.

The behind-closed-doors event will allow teams the chance to run this season’s cars; however, McLaren team principal Andrea Stella says they will only use the first day as a shakedown event - and not a proper test.

The shakedown will be held at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya across five days, starting on 26th January. The team, who will again be using Mercedes power units, will officially launch this season’s car on 9th February and will be the last team to do so. However, Stella says it was always their intention to skip the first day of track running in 2026.

Speaking at an event in McLaren’s MTC, he said: “We plan to start testing either in day two or day three, so we will not be testing in day one. We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development. “You all may know that you are allowed to test three days over the five that are available in Barcelona, and then we will start from, like I say, either day two or day three, and we will test for three days.”

When asked if his team would be put on the back foot by the decision, he added: “Actually, this was always going to be plan A. There's also so much of a change that we don't need to be necessarily the first on track. So we wanted to give as much time as possible for development, because every day of development, every day of design is 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. “Obviously, there will be updates pretty much, I guess, for every car between testing in Barcelona and the first race, but we thought that it was important to start and launch the car in the most competitive package and configuration. That's why we pushed all the timing to the limit but within a very manageable limit.”