McLaren’s last two seasons have been a slow-motion turnaround. From 2022’s slow start to 2025’s championship contention. There are several reasons this happened, and most of them have nothing to do with the car.

Wind tunnel

The MTC opened a new full-scale wind tunnel in late 2023. Before that, McLaren had been using the Toyota Cologne facility on a contract basis — which meant limited tunnel time and travel costs eating budget. Owning their tunnel changed everything: more correlation runs, faster development cycle, better confidence in design decisions.

Red Bull launched the RB22 in early February. Visually it’s an evolution of the RB21, but there are several details worth highlighting.

Sidepods

The biggest visual change. The inlet has moved up and inward — closer to the cockpit — and the undercut has been deepened. This follows the philosophy that started with the RB18: cleaner airflow to the floor edge, more energy in the diffuser.

I think they’ve gone slightly more extreme than McLaren this year, which is a reversal of last year’s trend.

The 2026 regulations have been talked about for two years, and now we finally have running cars. Here’s a clean-headed look at what really changed and what stayed the same.

Power unit

This is where the real revolution happened. The internal combustion engine has been heavily simplified — no MGU-H anymore, which was always the most complex and expensive component. The MGU-K is now responsible for nearly 50% of total power output, up from about 20% under 2014–2025 rules.

Tyre strategy looks simple on TV. Soft, medium, hard, fastest theoretical race time wins. In reality the decision tree is much deeper, and a lot of armchair strategists make decisions based on incomplete information.

What teams know that we don’t

When you’re watching at home you see the lap times and the tyre age on the broadcast. Teams have:

• Per-tyre temperature data (4 corners + carcass)
• Real-time tyre wear estimation from sensors
• Track temperature gradient over the race distance
• Driver feedback in real-time about grip levels
• Historical data on how that specific compound behaves at that specific track in similar conditions
• Live competitor pace and strategy projections

This is why team radio calls sometimes look counterintuitive — they have data we don’t.