Good first start for Rob Marshall’s McLaren: “Zero problems, times not indicative”

McLaren is also starting 2026 well. While Mercedes was grinding out km after km, setting the best times of the day with both Andrea Kimi Antonelli and George Russell, McLaren made its debut on the track on day-3 of the shakedown test in Barcelona. For the first time with the number 1 on the nose – in orange on a black background, as expected for the livery dedicated to the tests which features very few details in the traditional papaya color – Lando Norris christened the innovative MCL40 as he covered the first meters of his season as reigning world champion. A debut on the track which also positively impressed the engineer Rob Marshall, Adrian Newey’s historic collaborator in Red Bull and considered by many to be one of the main architects of the sensational (and victorious) rise of the Woking team in the last two seasons. Rob Marshall speaks “On the first day of testing we focused on running in the car – explains McLaren’s chief designer to the microphones of the official Formula 1 website – trying to learn as much as possible from the greatest number of laps we could do in a reasonable amount of time. So we worked basically trying to learn as many notions as possible about how the car works. Obviously there are a lot of new features on these single-seaters and therefore there is a lot to experiment with for the mechanics in the garage and obviously also for the drivers on the track. From a design point of view, The effort was enormous, as was the control and engineering aspect. And now the journey begins for the drivers, who have actually already spent some time in the simulator, but are only now really starting to work behind the wheel.” “The car has worked quite well – concludes Rob Marshall – and we’re quite happy after the first day because we haven’t had any serious problems or worrying failures. So yes, obviously there are small problems here and there, but we solved them during the day. And we’re looking forward to continuing the work. We see this week as a dress rehearsal, so for us it’s about fine-tuning the car, making it reliable, making it work, exploring all its potential, making sure it works in all the conditions we want it to work in. We’re trying everything we can in so that when we get to Bahrain we will try to set up this McLaren even a little better. It’s so cold in Barcelona that it’s obviously very difficult to get representative lap times.”