After the Azerbaijan Grand Prix of last weekend McLaren has taken the lead in the constructors’ championship, a feat last seen in 2014 when Kevin Magnussen and Jenson Button achieved a double podium for the Woking outfit in the season’s opening race in Australia. A pretty big milestone for the team then, something which team princpal Andrea Stella acknowledges if he allows himself to think about it for a moment.
“I think if I look at it for a second, as a milestone, then it’s definitely huge, because we don’t have to forget that at the start of 2023 we were last when we started the season, and now we lead the classification.
“That’s a huge milestone that has been possible thanks to the great work, the hard work, and the quality of the work of the entire team, the support from our shareholders, the support from our partners, the fans. You achieve this because you achieve it together.”
However, he does not want to linger in the moment too long, as there is little between the top four teams in terms of pace, meaning the focus needs to shift to improving the car and the execution during the races.
“We have work to do in terms of making the car faster,” Stella adds. “And we need to remain humble and we need to keep our feet on the ground, because we see that, in fairness, there’s not much to pick at all between the four top teams. And when it comes to McLaren, I often hear ‘McLaren best car, McLaren best car’. I think this is not in the numbers.
“I think in the numbers, McLaren is the best car in some kind of circuits, like Barcelona, Hungary, Zandvoort, for good technical reasons. But here, I don’t think McLaren did not enjoy any advantage over Ferrari, and I think not even over Red Bull. And if we see, even in Monza, Mercedes was within the 70 milliseconds, or 86 milliseconds between P2 and P6.
“So it’s just very, very balanced, and here I think the execution by the drivers and the execution by the team is just what makes the difference,” he once again praises his team.
Regarding making the car faster, there are upgrades in the pipeline Stella says, but obviously does not want to give away too much until the Car Presentation Submissions are published by the FIA.
“We are definitely working on upgrades for this season. We are now finalising this.
“I don’t want to disclose too much in terms of what and when, but we do have a plan to make the car faster. Whether we will be able to do it or not, we will see, because I think we have seen that at this level of development, it’s not an easy task to actually change the specification of the car and get it to work as you expect in your development tools, but that’s also why we took a bit more time to try and make sure that what we bring trackside is successful.
“So yes, I can confirm that we have some stuff coming for the next races, and I will let the surprise [be] in the subscription document when they are published.”
Engine supplier and rival Mercedes also have upgrades planned, Toto Wolff said. During Sunday’s race they tried out the old spec to better understand the impact on the performance, despite the track being somewhat of an outlier.
“The track is an outlier,” Wolff admits. “Nevertheless, it’s not like this was night and day. We still suffered from the same balance performance that we had on the new floor.
“So, in Singapore, we have the same one. That’s what we shift over. We need to race that. But from Austin onwards, we’ll probably go to a new spec.“
How new that new spec will be remains to be seen, as Mercedes first has to go over the data from both Baku and Singapore Wolff explains.
“I think we need to go over the data. You know, you’re going for a new new when the new didn’t work properly, but they were not as bad either. So, it’s either old new or new new, we don’t know yet.“
Whether or not Mercedes has taken their updates too far, like Red Bull, Wolff couldn’t say, but he did address the risk that comes with consolidating your package, as McLaren has done up to now.
“I only heard Zak saying that the last upgrade they put on the car was in Miami, which maybe is the truth.
“So, last upgrade in Miami, the car is going quicker and quicker, so it’s consolidating. But this is risky too, because if others are, you know, the upgrade is working, they put two tenths on the car, one tenth on the car, or two tenths on the car, you’re half a second ahead, and consolidating a package that is six months old doesn’t work either.
“So, that’s why many of us are getting it wrong at the moment.“
