Lando Norris’ race engineer Will Joseph suggests McLaren will have a stronger showing at this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix following the introduction of their Miami upgrade package.
Speaking to Tom Clarkson on the F1 Nation Podcast, Lando Norris’ race engineer Will Joseph discusses the major upgrade package the team introduced last time out in Miami. He explains the team is excited by their prospects considering the effectiveness of the upgrade package.
Following Norris’ debut win in Formula 1, Joseph believes McLaren can put together another strong showing in Imola this weekend, suggesting the circuit layout will better suit the MCL38.
“The upgrade that we brought was ginormous in size,” Joseph explained on the F1 Nation Podcast. “[It was an] extraordinary effort by everyone back at McLaren to bring all those upgrades out to Miami.
“It was unfortunate we couldn’t put every single piece on both cars, but each car had a good amount of upgrades. Oscar [Piastri] will receive the second part of that package when we get to Imola.
“If anything the upgrade favours some of the traits of Imola more than it does Miami. So everyone’s very very excited about what this could hold for the future.”
Reflecting back to the 2023 season which saw McLaren make major improvements to the MCL60 mid-season following a dismal start to the year, Joseph compared this year’s Miami upgrade to the package introduced in Austria Last year.
“If you look back to what happened in Austria last year, we put the upgrade on then and we went well, we had good performance. At the time we were kind of thinking ‘well maybe it’s because we just go well in Austria’.
“When it starts to behave well and perform at subsequent races, you start to build confidence. You build a further understanding of how to exploit that. So everyone is very excited.”
He continued to look ahead, stating that the team is already hard at work on the next planned upgrade package. He explained Norris’ victory in Miami has spurred on the team, adding fuel to the fire as they fight to gain ground on the front-running Red Bull.
“We’re working on the next round of upgrades. We’re looking ahead and we’re asking big things from the team. The team has given a lot in order to bring these bits here and now we’re saying ‘well look, can we do it again?’.
“The win in Miami helps you justify those decisions. People are in, they’re excited, they’re working hard, they’re ambitious. They’re pushing hard now to see the next step.“
When asked about his prediction of the upgrade performing better in Imola than Miami, Joseph explained that the circuit layout of Miami doesn’t play to the strengths of the car as well as Imola and other tracks later in the season.
“It’s less about the specifics of Imola,” he replied. “Maybe I should reword it and say, the specifics of Miami meant that the upgrade would be less powerful there potentially than we have seen in Imola. Miami has a lot of very low speed corners and the upgrade should behave better in medium to high speed corners.
“When we get to Imola, which is in more favour of that kind of corner, hopefully we should see an even further benefit.”
