McLaren: technical directors explain the dilemmas of the 2026 regulations

Power units reign supreme in the 2026 regulatory revolution, whose innovations, however, go far beyond just the engines. The new aerodynamics raises several questions about what is the best window for the cars to work in, while the movable wings could reduce the importance of efficiency, all with repercussions on suspension choices. This is what the McLaren technical leaders soon realized, in particular Rob Marshall, Chief Designer, and Mark Temple, Technical Director-Performance, protagonists of a press conference with some sector publications, including FormulaPassion. From the first screw to the last When you say that the 2026 cars have nothing in common with those that preceded them it is not a figure of speech and if you listen to Rob Marshall you understand why: “When they published the regulations, we looked into them and realized that literally every single part of the car was affected. For example, there are bearings inside the transmission, which only some people are aware of and which many will never even see, the load cycle of which is different. This implies that the bearing must be modified and also the circuit that supplies it with oil. At that point, you wonder if you also have to think about lubricants and that ends up becoming another project.” “There are also more obvious changes. The car will be smaller, shorter, narrower and significantly lighter, but the homologation tests are also more brutal, so you have to make the car safer for the drivers and those working around it. Then the FIA starts making numerical performance estimates and you start thinking about the loads you might have to handle and how to change the suspension. It’s a chain reaction that becomes a bigger and bigger project. Suddenly, you realize it affects literally every single person bolt”. Photo: FIA Packaging is a challenge One of the biggest challenges for the designers was defining the architecture, having to accommodate all the components on smaller cars than in the past. Marshall continues: “You might think that there is great freedom, but when you get into it you discover that this is not the case, because there are volumes to respect. The engines have a predefined length, while the position of the gearbox and axle shafts is fixed. You need a certain amount of petrol in the car and this requires a certain volume. The battery has larger dimensions than last year and this also fixes a certain length of the car. Then you have a certain volume for the driver and when you look at everything, you discover that you only have control over 150, 200, maybe 300 millimeters of the overall length of the machine.” It is therefore unlikely that there will be obvious differences in pace between the various single-seaters, at least according to McLaren: “Even the aerodynamic geometries of the nose are quite prescribed. There is a bit of margin on the structure of the gearbox and on some things around the pedals that you can play with. There isn’t much freedom. We hope that everyone has reached the same conclusion, but if there was more freedom, we wouldn’t be aware of it.” Photo by Mark Sutton – Formula 1/Formula 1 via Getty Images A new aerodynamic approach The mechanical and structural innovations are accompanied by aerodynamic ones, with the abandonment of the Venturi channels and the return of the flat bottom, but above all the strengthening of active aerodynamics. In this regard, it will be interesting to see if the most important parameter will still be efficiency, understood as the relationship between load and resistance to forward movement, given that the pilots will be able to open both wings wide on the straight. “Efficiency remains the most aerodynamically important thing,” reassures Mark Temple. “However, there is a change, because active aerodynamics significantly reduce straight-line drag. At that point, as a general rule, the load you have when cornering becomes more important than the straight-line drag.” “If you look at the season as a whole, there are tracks where active aerodynamics can be used more than others. For example, in Belgium in the last sector it cannot be used until the Bus Stop, so resistance with closed wings becomes more important. On circuits like Monza, however, where it can be activated on every straight, it is less relevant. A new dimension therefore comes into play in deciding how to set up the car. On tracks where active aerodynamics will be dominant, we will see that the cars they will use larger ailerons, while on those more similar to Belgium the situation will be similar to previous years”. (Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images Design dilemmas Another theme for 2026 is the persistence of the dualism between push rod and pull rod front suspensions, highlighted by the first images of the new single-seaters. According to Rob Marsahll, this is a decision that has little to do with mechanics: “In previous years, several cars had a push rod or pull rod suspension. It all depends on the aerodynamic choices, on which suspension fits your front wing, which is obviously completely new. I would say that the way in which other teams have organized their suspension depends on how they have designed it to interact with their aerodynamic package at the front. It’s all driven by aerodynamics. Mechanically speaking, both schemes are quite easy to achieve.” Then there is another dilemma and that is how far the teams will go in exploiting the dipped set-up, which is back in vogue for the first time since 2021. “I think the level of rake you make the car work at. it depends on the aerodynamic package”, continues Marshall. “I think the aim of these regulations was to try to force us to use higher ground clearances and from our experience I have the feeling that this will be the case. We still don’t know how high we will go. In Barcelona we have a long process ahead of us to try to understand which is the best window to make the car work.” Photo Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images “Being able to run with a high rake angle generally depends on the angle of attack of your tires. If there’s no drag, then that’s fine. It gives you the ability to have longer suspension travel, along with other benefits. In summary though, you’re going after peak downforce and you want the rear to follow you. That could happen with a high or low rake. I don’t think the angle will be small, but it may be less than what people expect.” The impact for the riders. Regardless of the rake angle, the engineers agree. the new cars will run at higher ground clearances than in 2025, without returning to 2021 levels. This will allow softer suspension settings to be used, making balance adjustments more effective to meet drivers’ requests. Mark Temple explains: “As we won’t have the extreme sensitivity to ground clearances of previous years, there will be a little more freedom to control the behavior and handling of the car without necessarily making it slower. It will be interesting to see what it will do. I think it will guarantees us greater margins to fine-tune the car to have a certain balance in corners.” Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images On the other hand, the drivers will have to familiarize themselves with the behavior of the car under braking, which will be affected by the recovery of energy through the rear axle. Mark Temple concludes: “The other aspect to consider is the approach to energy recovery during braking and cornering. It introduces a new challenge that we have not faced in any of the previous cycles. We still don’t know how this will impact what the driver will have to do and what he will need in terms of balance. It’s something we will learn in the tests.”