After a troubled start to the 2023 Formula 1 season which saw both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri fail to see the chequered flag at the Bahrain Grand Prix due to reliability issues, McLaren is looking ahead to improving its car “race-by-race” according to Team Principal Andrea Stella, with the first “major upgrade” expected for April’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Photo Credits: McLaren F1
The Woking team finds itself in a similar situation as it did at the start pf the 2022 season, with a troubled pre-season test fighting reliability issues, and a difficult race weekend in Bahrain leaving the team pointless heading into round two at Jeddah.
Despite Lando Norris’ race pace looking encouraging at some points during the race, it is clear the team is missing the ultimate raw performance from the leading midfield teams. This is partly down to a car which isn’t equipped with the team’s latest developments from the wind tunnel, and is several months behind its competitors.
New McLaren team principal, Andrea Stella explained that the main problem with the MCL60 is a lack of raw downforce, as the team wasn’t able to get its newer parts in the car in time for the start of the new season. He admitted that ongoing improvements to the facilities at the factory – McLaren aims to have its new wind tunnel facilities running by June – would “improve the rate of development”, but is confident in the talent and infrastructure already in place to do a good job nevertheless:
“When we say ‘fixable’ or ‘unfixable’, we need to be clear, first of all, of what we’re talking about,” he said. “The main limitation we have at the moment is aerodynamic downforce. Obviously, we can improve the rate of development of the car by having better infrastructure, by having more workforce, and this is why we are having the investments that are ongoing now at McLaren.
“However, I think that for the level of talent, and for the availability we have at McLaren already, we can recover and we can out-develop [the] other teams.
“Because what we see in development right now is a very ‘alive’ car in terms of development. There’s some areas of the car that seem to able to generate good downforce, [but] they were not ready in time to be part of the launch-spec.”
Stella said the car will evolve “race-by-race” and confirmed that the first major upgrade for the MCL60 will arrive at “around race four” which is the Azerbaijan GP, in late April – after a lengthy break due to the cancellation of the Chinese GP earlier this year.
Much like his team boss, Lando Norris is the confident that McLaren can recover the ground lost to its rivals during the season, taking inspiration from Ferrari and Aston Martin’s jump up the order in recent seasons.
And whilst he admitted that the off-season offers “more potential” for such changes, he believes McLaren can achieve “50% or 75%” of its desired leap forward during the 2023 season:
“I certainly think a big part of it is,” said Norris when asked if the MCL60’s problems are fixable during the 2023 season. “You can clearly how big of a step Aston [Martin] took from one year to another, we clearly saw how a big of a step Ferrari took from 2021 to 2022.
“I know both of those were in the off-season, so there’s maybe more potential do such a big change, but there’s no reason why 50% or 75% of that can’t be done through the season. I would like to think so.”
