The 2026 season will mark the first year of a radical set of new regulations and Stella believes that McLaren's championship success last season will count for nothing as the sport enters a new era.

The team principal said: "There's been so much work behind the design, the realisation, the build of the 2026 cars that, for what I can remember is almost unprecedented, because never before has there been such a huge and simultaneous change of chassis, power unit and tyres.

"But even the sheer volume of redesigning that went through the last 20 months at McLaren has been probably the biggest design, or in general, dealing with a new car project that I was a part of.

"This all makes it extremely interesting to see how the cars will perform, how the competitiveness order will be somehow mixed up.

"We are champions, but we don't carry being champions into 2026. Everyone will start from the starting blocks - everyone will start from zero."

Stella revealed that McLaren won't be ready to run their car on the opening day of pre-season testing in Barcelona next week as they want to have as much time as possible to design the car and find additional performance.

The Italian said: "We plan to start testing either in day two or day three, so we will not be testing in day one.

"We wanted to give ourselves as much time as possible for development, because every day of development, every day of design was adding a little bit of performance.

"If you are early on track you will have the reassurance of knowing what you need to know as soon as possible. But at the same time it means that you might have committed to the design and the realisation of the car relatively early, so you will have a compromise against development time and ultimate performance."