McLaren Formula 1 boss Andrea Stella has teased that it will introduce sizeable upgrades in the coming months as it bids to address the limitations of its MCL38 car.
Having begun the previous season struggling to score points, McLaren completed a remarkable mid-season turnaround that saw it become a regular podium scorer.
The Woking-based squad’s overhauled car accumulated more points than its rivals with the exception of champions Red Bull as it clinched fourth in the standings.
However, Ferrari’s own revamped package for this term has seen it steal a march on the teams chasing Red Bull, with McLaren locked in a tight battle with Mercedes.
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix illustrated the strengths and weaknesses of McLaren’s evolved car, with Oscar Piastri struggling to overtake Lewis Hamilton with DRS.
But Hamilton was unable to utilise that top-speed advantage in the closing stages when chasing down Lando Norris as the MCL38 excelled in the high-speed sweeps.
While Stella outlines that McLaren was aware of the shortcomings of its 2024 challenger, he admits that the Jeddah Corniche Circuit exhibited areas for improvement.
“The car limitations, for us, are very well known,” he said. “I think I’ve talked about that very frequently, and they are well exposed at this circuit, together with the points of strength.
“The points of strength, you will have seen, that anybody behind a McLaren in Sector 1 would lose ground. So, when you have these fast-flowing corners, in which it’s enough to do the first steer input, the car responds very well.
“When instead the corners are long, like in the last corner, and you need to really hold the steer for a long time, the car gives up a little bit and we lose a lot of time, which is where, like Ferrari, they are very strong, and that’s why [Charles] Leclerc was so competitive in the last sector, just that corner.
“And the other limitation was, somehow still we would like to have more top speed.
“So, I think these two features are very well exposed, at this track, where you have the long straights, and a couple of very long corners, where the limitation gets visible.”
“I think there is margin to understand the car a little bit more,” he added. “Like here [Saudi Arabia], we had a slightly different approach to set up between the two cars and I think we see some interesting positives and negatives, so you sort of want to make this knowledge and use it for the future.
“I mean, apart from this optimisation, which maybe is worth like one-tenth, it’s not like you can find any magic, because we have done already the test, three days, these weekends have been like no rain, so we’ve been on track for a long time. I think we know the car well, apart from this little difference between the two cars that we will review.
“And I think it’s very much a matter of upgrades. Or adaptation to the track in relation to the track characteristics.
“Like if we go to Suzuka, if you think Sector 1 is similar to Sector 1 here, McLaren will be fast. So we expect that Suzuka will be a good track for us.”
Nevertheless, Stella is aware that the development race will once again take on a critical role and has revealed McLaren will have “minor” enhancements at the next round.
“Otherwise, it’s a battle of development,” he continued.
“And the development may be the very visible developments where you come with an aerodynamic upgrade, which we will declare in the submissions, and it’s very visible.
“Or there’s some other things that you can deliver from a mechanical or even aerodynamic point of view. And at the moment in the pipeline, we have both.
“We have some minor things that will come for Australia and hopefully for Japan, but they will be a few milliseconds.
“And then hopefully within the first third of the season, we will have a major upgrade.”
Stella has explained that the interval in McLaren bringing noticeable improvements to the track has resulted from the budget cap making teams more cautious.
The Italian also pinpointed the challenge of optimising new parts with a sole practice session during Sprint weekends to expand upon McLaren’s patient approach.
“Delivering the upgrades, nowadays it doesn’t have to do very much with the logistics,” he contended.
“The main challenge is do you bring upgrades to Sprint races or not? Because you have like China and Miami, for instance, because you only have free practice one.
“But then you have another challenge, which is the budget cap. You can’t, as soon as you have something reasonable to production, you can’t do like this because you would run out of budget. So you sort of have to be convinced that this is going to be a good upgrade, and then you press the green button and you spend the money.
“And then I would say the next kind of reason why you don’t bring upgrades to Australia is that it takes time. To create a convincing package that is a significant step, it takes time.
“We are very happy with our development rate. I think over the last 12 months, we see that the development rate kept the gradient.
“So like we press the button for Austria last year, for Singapore, then on the new car, and then it’s going to be for like around race six, race seven.”
McLaren’s staggering late rise to fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship has entitled it to fewer wind tunnel testing hours compared to previous seasons.
Asked whether that has hampered the British outfit’s development gradient, Stella answered: “You do hit against the limits of the restricted aerodynamic development as a function of the fact that we finished higher on in the championship. To be honest, I hope in the future we will have less and less. It means we are doing better and better in the championship.”
