Ben Hunt: McLaren flexes its muscles to kick off F1 launch season

It was a rare thing these days. A team hosting an in-person car launch, rather than pressing ‘send' on an email containing some made-up quotes from its drivers and rendered images of its F1 car.

It was even rarer that it was the reigning world champion squad that would be first to throw the covers off its new challenger for the season ahead.

Usually such honour is taken by one of the teams at the back of the grid, eager to gain some much-needed media exposure - but not this time.

The 2025 F1 season is officially underway and out in front are the defending constructors’ champion team, McLaren, that launched the MCL39 on Thursday at Silverstone in front of F1 media, not hidden away at a private test track.

Understandably, the build up to the launch event was kept off social media to prevent fans from flocking to the Hilton Hotel that sits adjacent to the Silverstone Wing complex that holds the teams’ garages, but otherwise this was your typical launch of old.

A pithy observation but, reading between the lines, McLaren is confident heading into the new campaign. And it has reason to.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, Zak Brown, CEO, McLaren Racing

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

By going first, and so prominently, this can be viewed as some flex by McLaren, more evidence of which can be given by the comments from its team principal Andrea Stella, as Autosport asked him about his team’s preparations ahead of the new season.

The Italian, who had come into the 2023 season with a stark warning that the team would initially struggle to be competitive, was more positive going into the 2024 campaign.

But for 2025, there is an even greater shift in optimism. Promising an “innovative” approach to the design philosophy despite being one that was a “relatively challenging approach”, Stella is noticeably upbeat with his expectations.

“What I can say in terms of entering the 2025 season, is that I'm pleased that we could keep the rate of development that we have had over the last two years,” Stella said.

“The 2025 car on the paper should be a decent step forward. But if I look from far enough, I think this step forward is actually on a linear trend to some of the other upgrades or developments that we took in 2023. And then in 2024.

“This 2025 car, at least for what we see in our numbers, should be just along this line, which is good news itself. It means we have not run out of steam.”

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL39

Photo by: McLaren

Stella has rightly received the plaudits for McLaren’s incredible trajectory over the past two seasons. However, there has also been painful lessons, such as the team throwing away a victory in last year’s British GP and the controversial decision to swap race-leader Lando Norris with Oscar Piastri during the Hungarian GP.

Upon reflection, McLaren should have prioritised Norris’ fight in the drivers’ championship.

The message from McLaren over the season was one of learning and Stella says the team has indeed studied its failings and also understood why it was able to win.

He added: “The most important thing, first of all, is the culture. You need to have the principles, you need to have a mindset associated to dealing with missed opportunities.

“We have done, as a team, quite a lot of work to make sure that when there's a missed opportunity, while it can be painful in the short term or in the moment, because it means that you might have lost some points or you might have lost a possible victory, like at Silverstone.

“At the same time this becomes a great opportunity to improve, be it an individual improvement or a group improvement, or a team improvement.

Andrea Stella, Team Principal, McLaren F1 Team, the McLaren team celebrate in Parc Ferme

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“So certainly for me as a team principal, a lot of my efforts have gone into establishing this kind of mindset, which is a positive mindset towards missed opportunities.

“You mentioned the missed opportunities, but in reality, there's a lot to consolidate even when things go well. You do have to understand why things have gone well, rather than simply think, that's because I'm good.

“Well, you better check exactly why things went well. So that's an ethos, that's a cultural element above all.”

McLaren it seems, would appear to be in good shape and the noises emanating from the team are positive. Yet despite this rare, and frankly welcome return to a traditional launch event, as always, we will not know for sure how quick McLaren is until qualifying for the opener in Melbourne next month.