McLaren MCL34, 2019

McLaren confirm launch date for MCL35

2020 F1 season

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McLaren has become the latest team to reveal the launch date of its new car for the 2020 F1 season.

The MCL35 will be presented at the McLaren Technology Centre on Thursday 13th February. They are the third team to confirm their launch plans for the new season. The new McLaren will appear two days after Ferrari launches its car and one day before Alpha Tauri present their 2020 machine.

The launch was announced in a promotional video filmed at the MTC in which driver Lando Norris pretended to reveal the date by accident.

The McLaren MCL35 will the third and final car from the Woking stable to be powered by Renault before the team switches to Mercedes engines for the 2021 F1 season.

McLaren has recently confirmed two new additions to its sponsor portfolio ahead of the launch. It has lured Unilever, whose brands include Rexona and Sure, away from rivals Williams and brought Klipsch on board as a supplier of audio equipment.

Carlos Sainz Jnr and Norris, who joined the team’s race line-up last year, will remain its drivers for the new F1 season. The team took fourth in the world championship last year, which was its best finishing position since 2012.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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7 comments on “McLaren confirm launch date for MCL35”

  1. And they did it in style :) (check they yt)

  2. I don’t think it’s possible to judge too much from a photo, but if you check the team’s Twitter, on the picture of the launch date there’s a shady silhouette of a front wing. Seems like McLaren’s experimenting with a 2021-style nose? Again, I’m most probably wrong, but I’m keen on assuming such funny things.

    1. @pironitheprovocateur Yeah I appreciate your enthusiasm but I’d be very very surprised if anything on these current cars will be translatable to the 2021 cars other than the power units. I don’t think there’d be any point putting a nose on their 2020 car that belongs on the 2021, and expecting some significance aero/performance wise from that. The cars are just going to be so drastically different that I’m quite sure it’s a brand new drawing board and the noses will not be relatable. Put another way they wouldn’t learn from using a 2021 nose this year, as it won’t have around it the proper suspension and wings, and floor etc etc. and so any data from 2020 would have to be thrown out once the nose is surrounded by the rest of the 2021 effort.

  3. Do people get excited over the first sight of a car, which in many cases will have been altered by the time of the first race?

    1. I do but mainly because it means that we’re getting closer to the start of a new season. The other thing I like to see is the new livery if a car has one.

      1. Amen to that.

  4. Cristiano Ferreira
    14th January 2020, 14:30

    I miss the 2017 livery

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