If we go back to the season opener in Bahrain, Lando Norris finished 48.458 seconds behind winner Max Verstappen. Within a span of a few races, McLaren successfully turned things around, and their first major upgrades at Miami gave them a performance boost big enough for Norris to beat Verstappen and secure his maiden F1 victory.
The young Brit’s dominant win at the Dutch Grand Prix bears testament to the hard work the Woking-based team has been putting in recently. The upgrades McLaren brought to Zandvoort proved to be a roaring success, as they took a massive leap forward in terms of performance.
However, with merely three victories to their name so far, it is fairly evident that McLaren hasn’t been able to maximise the potential of MCL38 to its fullest. Moving forward, Andrea Stella hopes to build on the foundations of the Zandvoort package and bring a car capable of challenging Red Bull even on tracks where they appear to have an advantage.
Facing the media after the race, the victorious team boss spoke at length about their upgrade package as they inch towards the constructors’ title. When asked if their rear wing offset [in comparison to Verstappen’s] was a deliberate outcome of the upgrade, Stella replied that it wasn’t necessarily so.
They are targeting as many tracks as possible in order to increase their aerodynamic efficiency accordingly, and they plan to accomplish the same by playing with the level of load and expanding their already diverse family of rear wings.
“It’s not like it’s a function of the upgrades, but with the wing we had for Monaco, we think it’s just Monaco specific. While as we are going through our family of wings, and we are upgrading the wings, we thought we should have gone for a lower drag level than Monaco, to bring it as a next update of all the rear wing families, like we have upgraded all the rear wing families.
“Like even the one in Spa was a new wing, because it was upgraded around some more modern concepts, but for the Spa drag level. And here we took the upgraded one, but for the kind of Zandvoort, Hungary rear wing level.”
With regard to the question of whether McLaren might find themselves on the back foot in comparison to Red Bull on certain tracks, the Italian offered his honest opinion that they are optimistic about their performance on tracks that share similar traits with Zandvoort. However, by optimising their upgrade packages, they expect to find themselves challenging Red Bull even on circuits that might favour them.
Stella further elaborated that their decision to add a new rear wing configuration to the Zandvoort upgrades was influenced by the RB20’s efficiency in clean air on high-speed circuits. By demonstrating that they are still capable of reducing drag when they are not being undermined by turbulent air, Red Bull inspired McLaren to come up with an aero package that would grant them a huge advantage over the reigning world champions on the straights.
“I think if we go to tracks which belong to this kind of family of tracks, then I think we can be confident that we will perform strongly, like high downforce, long corners.
“If we go to tracks where you have very high-speed corners, like in Silverstone, then we know Red Bull is very strong in this kind of layout. And still, I think if we go back to Austria, they will be faster, because in Austria they pulled off a four tenths advantage in qualifying. But I think, thanks to the upgrades, now we will be more competitive, even where Red Bull were faster than us, potentially.”
Talking about their relative competitiveness, Stella estimated that MCL38, in its current form, won’t be able to turn up at the remaining races and walk away as the best car every single weekend. Subsequently, he revealed that McLaren has multiple upgrades in the pipeline till the end of the season to perfect their design.
“It’s not easy to see. I think, in a way, we missed the opportunity to see in Belgium who would have been the fastest car in dry conditions, because of the qualifying in intermediate tyres.
“But we think that the car in the current configuration is possibly not enough in terms of the performance required to be the best car at every single event. That’s why we plan to deliver more upgrades before the end of the season.”
