McLaren boss Andrea Stella has claimed that the team is “not at the end of the road” when it comes to more development with the current-generation Formula 1 car.
The Woking-based squad completed an unprecedented turnaround last term as mid-season upgrades took it from battling to score points to landing regular podiums.
McLaren has carried that momentum into this campaign with updates in Miami delivering Lando Norris’ maiden win and three successive second-place results since.
The MCL38 under its current iteration has proven to be competitive across all track configurations, with Stella divulging its low-speed weakness has been eradicated.
“It looks like the picture of our competitiveness is starting to finally change, where low speed doesn’t appear anymore like a clear weakness,” he disclosed in Monaco.
But Stella remained cautious as he conceded that McLaren’s improvement through slow-speed corners had exceeded the expectations placed on the predicted gains.
However, the Italian has revealed that McLaren has since begun to establish where the progression emanated from, although he would not be drawn on the specifics.
“We are starting to understand that some of the things we were working on unlocked some of the important behaviours of the car, which become relevant for low-speed corners,” he said.
“But that is information that we don’t necessarily want to share because we don’t want competitors to look into that.
“I think for us internally, it’s important that some of the work we have done over the previous month seems to kind of have delivered because we are not at the end of the road in terms of this line of development.
“There’s a few more things we can do, and that’s what we are concentrating on for further updates this season and obviously the 2025 car.”
McLaren has accumulated more points than the competition since the side was able to eliminate the limitations that had been restricting its overall competitiveness.
And while he has been candid about McLaren having more scope to enhance its pace, Stella has clarified that the team’s focus is now on pursuing incremental steps.
“We will make some upgrades for the coming races, but it will not be a single major upgrade like we have seen in the last 12 months,” he admitted.
“It’s more individual components where we’ve found a bit more performance and rather than wait until we can use it all together, we’ll take it to the track when it’s ready.
“So I won’t say what. But we’ll see some new things in the next few races.”
