McLaren boss Andrea Stella says that "pretty much every part" has been changed on its new MCL39 in its bid to produce another Formula 1 title winner.
The reigning constructors' champion squad revealed the car during a filming day at Silverstone on Thursday, becoming the first F1 team to show off its 2025 design.
The car features a number of visible changes compared to its 2024 MCL38 – including revamped front and rear suspension, a wider airbox inlet and tweaks to the sidepod inlets and shape that is in line with what Ferrari and Red Bull had last year.
Speaking at the filming day, Stella revealed that the design overhaul went deeper than just what could be seen, with a new monocoque included in a push to improve every single component.
"This car is innovative," he said. "Pretty much every fundamental component of the layout has been subject to some innovation in order to gain...sometimes not only by marginal gains, some technical opportunities for development.
"Most of the time these serve the purpose of aerodynamic requirements or in some other cases, for mechanical grip."
He added: "In reality pretty much from the front wing to the gearbox, crash structure, everything has been subject to optimisation. Sometimes incrementally, sometimes actually quite substantially."
Lando Norris was the first driver to try out the MCL39 during the promotional run at Silverstone, which is restricted to 200km.
While the near-freezing temperatures and demo tyres meant getting any meaningful gauge of the car was not possible, Norris was upbeat that the scale of the challenge McLaren had given itself in revamping its car so comprehensively had not resulted in any early dramas.
"It felt normal, I'd say," he explained. "So that's been the first good step, because they have been quite innovative with some of the designs and some things that they tried to attack with the car this year.
"That has caused trickiness amongst the design, all of those sides of things, but the guys have done a very good job to try and explore more areas and push boundaries.
"You're always a little bit nervous that things are not going to be perfect when you try them, and how well they are going to match the track and windtunnel, all these things put together.
"But I think everything's working as it should, and everything feels normal."
Aerodynamic efficiency
Stella explained that electing to go for a big car overhaul was primarily motivated by a target of improving aerodynamic efficiency – with a reduction in volumes for key components giving aerodynamicists more freedom to exploit gains they want.
While part of the reason for the suspension revisions at the front and rear was improving tyre management, Stella suggested that aerodynamic factors were at play too.
"Obviously there's some tunings on the suspensions as well, in terms of the mechanical grip, but nowadays the suspension tends to serve aerodynamics," he said.
Early upgrade road map
The McLaren will likely evolve for pre-season testing that begins in Bahrain later this month, with wings almost certainly set to change, but Stella said that most of what was on display at Silverstone would be carried forward.
And, although teams are juggling how best to balance resources between 2025 developments and the new rules coming for 2026, Stella said McLaren was committed to a plan that was not dissimilar to what it had done in the past.
"We have not changed the approach or the rate of development with a front loading of our developments," he explained.
"We've just tried to go as fast as possible in terms of developing the car, which means there will be some updates during the early races of the season. But this would have been the same even without a '26 change of regulations looming ahead.
"We're just going as fast as possible because we're very aware that last season, even if it's been a successful season, the margins we have from a performance point of view meant we needed to be aggressive with the car and try to cash in as much performance as possible.
"I think those margins were so small, that considering the development other teams would have had, had we not gone as fast as possible in terms of development, we might very quickly lose any advantage that we had.
"Definitely we kept full gas in terms of development, and we will see if we have been able to develop more than our competitors from the 2024 to 2025 car."
