McLaren boss Andrea Stella has pinpointed high-speed cornering as the main area where the team must now improve in its increasing Formula 1 battle with Red Bull.
The Woking-based squad has emerged as Red Bull’s closest challenger this season ever since developments in Miami inspired Lando Norris to claim his maiden win.
However, McLaren has been unable to add to that breakthrough in the succeeding races as minute details have seen Norris come up short in both Canada and Spain.
The rueful decision not to pit under a Safete Car in mixed conditions in Montreal cost Norris the lead, while the Briton insisted he should have triumphed in Barcelona.
Norris beat Max Verstappen to pole position but lost the lead at the start when the Red Bull pulled alongside and George Russell swooped around both their outsides.
McLaren elected to retain its pre-race plan to run extended stints and the newer rubber witnessed a late-charging Norris eradicate a nine-second deficit down to 2.2s.
But while Norris took the blame over McLaren squandering another opening with the “quickest car”, Stella has asserted that the relative pace with Red Bull was equal.
“I think the race pace was very, very similar,” Stella contended. “Very, very similar.
“I think the fact that we were faster at the end is because we had fresher tyres. The fact that he was faster at the start is because we were behind Russell.
“But it would almost look like the great balance of performance that we had in qualifying. Parity of performance.
“Almost like transferred into the race. Where normally you have some variations as a function of how you interact with the tyres.
“But actually, today I think it was very similar.
“Which in a track that is so demanding on tyres, so demanding on aerodynamics, I think that’s really good news for the progress that we have made with the performance of the car.”
McLaren’s remarkable turnaround last season saw its best results come on high-speed circuits where the MCL60 transpired to be a close second to Red Bull’s RB20.
However, Stella admitted the updates in Miami “exceeded expectations” when it came to improving the low-speed performance to the point it’s no longer a weakness.
Stella denied that McLaren has traded its previous high-speed prowess to enhance slow-speed cornering, but accepted the former is one area that needs addressing.
“I would say that while there are some sections of the car that don’t necessarily fit the characteristics we have now,” he explained.
“There are some others that will fit. Like if we look at the second sector. We’ve been very competitive all weekend.
“And this is again witnessing the improvement we have made in the medium and low speed [corners].
“Like we have discussed in previous events which were mainly low-speed dominated. We have some work to do actually now in high speed.
“The fact that we’ve been able to alter the personality of the car, now it’s a car that works well in a speed range which 12 months ago was our weakness, but with this generation of cars you gain somewhere, you lose a little bit somewhere else. And you just have to continue your development and make sure that… it’s not like we made high speed worse.
“It’s like we didn’t improve it as much as we did in some other areas. And some other people did. But in certainly Red Bull, they are very good in high and very high speed.”
