F1 | McLaren: a new fund will arrive, but only at the right time

After a start to the season in which the MCL38 appeared on the starting grid as something of an open construction site, given that the team had failed to complete the work hoped for over the winter, McLaren was the team that made the most significant progress during the season and now has the reference car on the grid.

The package brought to Miami is certainly the one that changed the fate of this single-seater, so much so that it pushed the team to focus on a more cautious approach in terms of updates. Knowing that they had a competitive car that could keep up with Red Bull, the engineers from Woking decided to wait and study the car thoroughly before fitting further innovations that could have pushed it in the wrong direction.

In fact, during this season, many teams have had problems with developments, such as Ferrari, Aston Martin and Racing Bulls, who have returned to the bottom of previous specifications to try to solve the difficulties they had encountered. More recently, Mercedes has also brought a new unit, but it is not yet entirely sure of the effects: in terms of numbers, it gives the increase in the load required, but on the other hand it has also brought an imbalance in terms of balance.

From this point of view, given the sensitivity of this element, the British team has chosen to wait, but before the end of the season other innovations should arrive to give new life to the fight for the two world titles. An important topic while Red Bull is struggling with the difficulties on the BR20, which also see the floor among the culprits: for this reason, from the Dutch GP, Verstappen has returned to a specific mix of various units brought during the year, even if the base is the floor used at the beginning of the season.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella explained that one of the reasons his team has not encountered any obstacles in the middle of the championship this year is that it has only made one real major update, thus minimising the risk of problems. From there it has given itself time to understand and study in depth how it works on track, limiting itself, at least until the event in Holland, to working on the wings to adapt to the various tracks.

“We didn’t make a significant update after Miami. The next update, not as big as the one in Miami, was done in Zandvoort and it wasn’t the whole floor, just a detail. It was other areas of the car.”

“But there’s a reason why we haven’t brought some updates – because we see that if we had done everything in a short time, we might have had doubts when these parts were tested in full scale on the real car. So we’re taking the time to convince ourselves that the development is ready to be taken to the track.”

Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, during the pit stop

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Although McLaren dominated the recent Dutch Grand Prix weekend, Stella believes the performance was the exception rather than the norm, with the gaps between the cars being narrow. However, on the other hand, the Monza result shows that the MCL38 is becoming an increasingly complete car, as last year it struggled on low-downforce circuits, where the drag issues that the MCL60 still suffered from would emerge.

“I think the grid order is very much about the drivers’ ability to exploit the available grip, rather than whether the car is dominant. If we look at the lap times, rather than simply looking at the top positions, we see that all the drivers from the four fastest teams were in a position to take the top spot on the grid.”