Official: the 2026 McLaren will be called MCL40

McLaren has made official the name of the car that will defend the world titles won in 2025. The Woking team remains faithful to tradition, maintaining the nomenclature used in past seasons. For the debut on the track we will have to wait for the tests in Barcelona, ​​while the official presentation of the Papaya single-seater is scheduled for Monday 9 February. The heir to the MCL39 The British team has announced that the official name of the 2026 car will be MCL40. McLaren thus continues the numbering of the previous Woking single-seaters, whose only variation on the theme occurred in 2021. In the midst of the pandemic, the regulation required the teams to reuse the chassis from the 2020 season, with the possibility of modifying them through a system of development tokens. Since it was therefore an evolution of the previous project, the team decided to rename the car MCL35M, where the last letter paid homage to the return of Mercedes engines. The English team also released a first image of the MCL40 in profile, albeit entirely obscured. To better appreciate its shapes we must hope that some images emerge from the Barcelona tests, where McLaren has already announced that it will not take to the track before the second day. Otherwise, we will have to wait until February 9th, when the team will unveil the car directly in Bahrain.