The 2025 Formula 1 launch season got underway in a mysterious manner with the championship-winning constructors, no less.
From a distance, while undergoing its Silverstone shakedown, dressed in a papaya and black camouflage livery that makes its defining characteristics very hard to discern.
Deliberate? Of course; it wouldn’t be launch season without a dash of photographic trickery – or indeed, a touch of deliberate vagueness. That’s what makes it exciting...
It's worth noting that the new MCL39 shares some obvious similarities with its predecessor, the MCL38, which might be intended to conceal the car's appearance in testing or at the season's opening round. The front and rear wings seem to be identical to the specifications used by the team at the end of the 2024 season.
Although the front wing looks familiar, a closer look reveals some noticeable changes. From the front, the team has chosen to keep the pull-rod activated front suspension system, with the torsion bar rockers located at the bottom of the chassis to lower the center of mass. However, it appears that the rear leg of the upper suspension wishbone has been relocated to an even lower mounting point than before. When viewed from the front, the suspension appears to be almost level with the pull-rod.
A prominent design element of this car generation is the adjustable suspension wishbone, which reaches its peak at the end of the year. This feature has several immediate aerodynamic benefits. It allows the suspension fairings to be shaped in a way that directs airflow towards the sidepod's undercut, keeping the flow energized by shortening its path to the rear of the car.
Although the MCL39 is similar to the MCL38, McLaren has still made some modifications.
Photo by: McLaren
However, the outcome has a dual impact. The positioning of the suspension arms alters the load distribution through the chassis, and also influences the dynamic characteristics of the vehicle, which should counterbalance the effect of dive - when the car tilts forward under braking and brings the front of the floor closer to the ground.
Maintaining a stable floor inclination is crucial as it preserves the aerodynamic properties below, ensuring the Venturi tunnels operate consistently across different driving conditions, such as on straights, under braking, and through corners.
The engine cover has been slightly widened at the top to accommodate the new component. As a result, the area above the sidepods is slightly less compact, particularly towards the rear. The 'shelf' that has been a common feature in this area, where the bodywork expands to release heat and then tightens up, is now less pronounced.
At this point, the sidepods appear to be similar to those seen on the MCL38, with a clear top-side ramp maintaining a path for airflow over the diffuser. This is expected to be accompanied by a channel at the trailing edge, although this feature is not immediately visible from the images provided by the team.
There's more to come from McLaren in the coming weeks, even if it's just more details that will become clearer in the flesh.
We'd say the inlets look fairly similar, but the appearance of the MCL39's livery makes it quite hard to notice the shape. There's a subtle hint of a P-shaped inlet, with a narrow opening extending downwards along the chassis sides, but this could also be a trick of the light.
In any case, the over-wing above the inlets remains in place, though its outer edge now curves upwards to serve as a mounting point for the mirror attachment. The capability to create a tip vortex is lost in this design, but it's possible that aerodynamicists felt it was no longer necessary to achieve this.
The push-rod rear suspension configuration remains unchanged, primarily to prevent the springs and rockers from obstructing the diffuser area and to maximize the available space for generating downforce. This setup has been employed by McLaren for the past three seasons, resulting in no significant modification to the existing formula.
McLaren's head, Stella, states that the pace of progress has been in line with the company's past trends.
Photo by: McLaren
It's challenging to discern further details due to the limited and camouflaged visual information presented, which was likely the intended result. Nonetheless, one can infer that McLaren has more to reveal in the near future, even if certain aspects will only become apparent upon closer inspection.
Team principal Andrea Stella claims that the MCL39 shown is "pretty substantially the one that we will see during the Bahrain test", although people may interpret his statement differently. He states that the team pursued the usual objectives in terms of downforce and aerodynamic efficiency, while noting that the team was "cautious" in how much it dared to innovate, given that it was already building on a title-winning foundation.
McLaren is also working to enhance its long-term speed with the MCL39, and modifications have been made to the suspension setup to help the car utilize its Pirelli tyres more effectively over the course of a race.
With no major underlying problems in its MCL38, McLaren has been able to focus on refining the car's performance without introducing additional complexities that might make it harder to handle.
Stella notes that the rate of development has been consistent with what he's observed during his tenure as team principal, which enabled the team to turn its disappointing start to 2023 around and become constructors' champion in 2024. We may need to revisit the finer details of the car as testing intensifies, but fundamentally, McLaren seems to have maintained its course rather than completely overhauling its approach in 2025.
In any case, a bigger challenge remains: defending the constructors' championship and simultaneously winning the drivers' championship. To achieve that, the MCL39 must do what its predecessors could not: start the season at the top, rather than playing catch-up in the opening rounds.
Will these updates keep McLaren at the forefront of its competitors?
Photo by: McLaren