McLaren became the first Formula 1 team to reveal pictures of its 2025 car on Thursday with an early launch at Silverstone using a one-off livery.
The McLaren MCL39 broke cover at a Silverstone shakedown in a papaya orange and black camouflage design, as teams cannot reveal their actual 2025 colours until the collective F1 launch event at London’s O2 Arena on February 18.
Saving the liveries for the unique F1 75th anniversary event doesn’t stop special designs, though, and McLaren’s gone first in the 2025 launch season with an event it kept under wraps to surprise fans.
McLaren’s typically been one of F1’s more secretive teams before testing. Last year it dropped its livery early but kept the car under wraps, then shared images in which it obscured certain sensitive parts of the design.
In previous years it has even gone to the trouble of Photoshopping out parts of the car in pictures of it running on track.
But it combined the unveiling of the 2025 car at an in-person event with a filming day in which both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri share driving duties over 200 kilometres.
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown believes the team has "made further steps" from its championship-winning 2024 car with this 2025 design, which it hopes will be strong enough to mount a full drivers' title challenge as well.
Lando Norris never quite got into drivers' title contention last year once McLaren's early season upgrades turned it into a regular victory contender, as Red Bull and Max Verstappen benefitted from their dominant early start to manage a points buffer over the rest of the season.
"Whilst we finished last year as champions, 2024 highlighted how highly competitive the grid is, which is something that will carry through to this year’s championship," said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella.
"We therefore must keep focused to compete at the front in this tight field. It’s going to be an exciting but incredibly challenging year ahead.
“The team have worked extremely hard to prepare as best as possible for the start of the season.
"We learned a lot from our battles last year, so we take this and use it to push our goal for the year."
In the wild ⚡️#McLaren #F1 pic.twitter.com/LEXMrKWiaK
— McLaren (@McLarenF1) February 13, 2025
After the camo livery, which Norris called "fun and great to be able to showcase something different", McLaren's real 2025 livery will be unveiled next Tuesday.
Pre-season testing begins in Bahrain on Wednesday February 26 and runs until Friday February 28.
