F1 | McLaren: the first updates will arrive between Miami and Imola

2024 started exactly as expected at McLaren. The car is more competitive than 12 months ago, when it was the protagonist of an extremely negative start to the season, but not enough to consistently face Ferrari. For the moment, in fact, the Cavallino team has proven to be the second force both in qualifying and in terms of race pace in both the first two events of the world championship, while behind it Mercedes, Aston Martin and McLaren have alternated depending on the characteristics of the track and their respective strengths.

In Bahrain the MCL38 placed itself as the fourth most competitive car, while in Saudi Arabia it was able to move up one position, finishing only behind Red Bull and Ferrari. In Jeddah the difference in performance between qualifying and the race was also noticed: if on the flying lap the car paid for the lack of effectiveness with open DRS and the difficulties in the long-distance corners, so much so that it slipped behind Aston Martin, during the race they instead other qualities emerged, such as efficiency in very fast corners.

Clearly, this does not mean that all the problems encountered on Friday have disappeared, because although the efficiency of the DRS played a less decisive role on Saturday, the low top speeds at the end of the straight also had an impact on the race , as in the duel with Lewis Hamilton. Problems that McLaren was already aware of, given that it was unable to achieve all the development objectives set in the winter, and which it has carried with it since last season.

The weak points of the MCL38 in fact recall the problems already observed on its progenitor, the MCL60: low top speeds on accelerations, especially on tracks tending to have low load, difficulty in particularly long corners and an annoying understeer in very slow ones where you have to rely on the front. On the other hand, the new car also shares excellent characteristics in fast corners where the first input on the steering wheel counts, as in the first sector of Jeddah.

McLaren is aware that the car needs considerable work to overcome these weak points and, according to Andrea Stella, the first major set of technical innovations to further improve these characteristics is expected in the first third of the season. The goal is to be ready in time for the sixth or seventh stage of the calendar, between Miami and Imola.

“We have some little things coming for Australia and hopefully Japan, but they will be millisecond improvements. And then hopefully within the first third of the season, we'll have a major update. It will be for the sixth or seventh race”, explained the Team Principal.

However, bringing them to Miami would represent a challenge, not so much in terms of logistics, but in terms of preparation. In fact, a sprint race is planned for the US stage this year, which would mean having only one free practice session available to test the new package before hitting the track for qualifying. Although it is true that the latest regulatory changes have guaranteed the teams greater freedom by giving the possibility to reopen the Parc Fermé after the sprint race to make setup changes using the data from the short race, it is still a race against time .

Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, Lando Norris, McLaren MCL30

Photo by: Shameem Fahath

On the other hand, however, showing up in Miami with some technical innovations would give the opportunity to then have a week of rest to study the data obtained from the weekend before the double round in Imola and Monaco. “The main challenge is: bring the updates to sprint races or not? Because there are China and Miami, for example, because they only have one free practice session,” explained Stella.

“But then there is another challenge, which is the budget limit. You can't make it happen as soon as you have something reasonable to produce, because you risk running out of budget. So you have to be convinced that this will be a good update. Then you press the green button and spend the money. And then I would say the other reason why they don't bring updates [significativi] in Australia is that it takes time to create a compelling package that is a significant step.”

Stella explained that McLaren still has some margin to find in the MCL38, but ruled out that great advantages could be obtained until the update package arrives, as more invasive interventions are needed to correct certain traits of the car.

“I think there is a margin to extract something more from the car. In Jeddah we followed a slightly different approach on the set-up of the 2 cars. And I think we found some interesting positive and negative aspects. This optimization is worth perhaps a tenth, it's not like you can do magic. For the rest, I think it's a question of updates or adaptation to the track in relation to the characteristics of the track”, said the Team Principal.