McLaren pinpoints areas it is lacking in 2026 F1 testing

As Mercedes and Red Bull trade headlines, Lando Norris and Neil Houldey offer their perspective of McLaren's progress with Formula 1's 2026 rules

There's nothing more perilous than taking early Formula 1 testing numbers at face value, so while McLaren keeps leading the mileage charts in Bahrain and circulates near the top of the timesheets, the team doesn't appear to be particularly ecstatic about where it is right now.

The paddock in Manama appears to be split into camps who believe Mercedes still has an ace up its Adidas-branded sleeve, and those who have put Red Bull and its Ford-backed powertrains on a pedestal, scratching their heads at how the factory team is managing to harvest electric energy so efficiently, so it can deploy more on the straights.

Max Verstappen's long runs on Wednesday, where he could keep repeating those higher straightline speeds, was particularly impressive in that regard. Having said that, it remains to be seen how much Mercedes' powerplants are being turned up at this stage, while teams and drivers still have four days to finetune software settings, driving styles and energy strategies. There is also a political element to not showing your hand early and putting the spotlight on others, which was on full display on Wednesday.

"Without trying, you can just go quicker"

But as the four-car lead pack of Red Bull, McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari is starting to emerge, reigning world champion Lando Norris isn't having much of a spring in his step just yet, insisting McLaren's MCL40 is not only behind Red Bull but also behind Ferrari at this point in time.

"They have a very good power unit by the looks of things," Norris said about Red Bull's impressive looking GPS traces. "They deploy and have a lot of efficiency. We need to understand how they have that. There's always things I can maybe do a little bit, some things on the McLaren side and on the Mercedes HPP side. They know there's certainly areas we need to improve.

"But the Red Bulls seem to have done a very good job, and the Ford powertrain seems to be very strong. Fair play to them. But at the minute, they're a good step ahead of us. When someone just has a deployment advantage, that's just a beautiful bit of lap time to have in your pocket. It's like, without trying, you can just go quicker.

"Also from a car point of view, they seem to be performing well, and we don't seem to be quite at the level of the Ferrari either at the minute. I know we are going to improve, but I'm sure they are as well. We've got a pretty big step to make to be confident of beating them, that's for sure."

Lando Norris, McLaren

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

Norris, who ended the day in second, half a second behind Charles Leclerc's chart topping morning lap, said his 149-lap effort on Thursday at least delivered a generous helping of data to pore over after completing significantly fewer laps than the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari at the Barcelona shakedown.

"There's still plenty of things we need to get our head around, but I would say today was a good day for me in terms of understanding a lot of things and feeling more confident in the car," he said. "It's fun looking into the details from today, looking at the information that we gathered, and them trying to turn it into a better power unit altogether.

"But at the minute, we just need more efficiency, I think. There are pros and cons of it, and it's not an easy thing to get, otherwise they would have done it already. We have to learn over the next few days again how we can change this around."

McLaren's Neil Houldey, technical director for engineering, was confident the Woking squad will get what it needs from Mercedes for its energy usage to be competitive.

"Understanding where to deploy, where to harvest is going to be really important," he said. "Making sure that we've got the maximum amount of deployment that we possibly can, which I think is what you're seeing in some of the GPS traces.

"Firstly, you see some teams who are able to deploy more and you also see teams, whether they're from the same or from a different manufacturer, deploying at different times in the lap just as we're starting to learn a little bit more about where those correct deployment areas are.

"I know that Mercedes HPP has worked incredibly hard to get the PU that we've got, and I've no doubt that we'll get the deployment that we need to be competitive this year."