F1 | McLaren works on weak points: “But we need another 12 months”

Going back 12 months, to the beginning of 2023, McLaren was fighting hard to get into the points, not always with the desired results. However, after a difficult start to the season, the Woking team is the one that has made the most progress during the world championship thanks to the technical innovations introduced with the various update packages.

From fighting to avoid the back rows, as at the beginning of 2023, McLaren managed to get back into the fight for the podium with a certain stability, although direct opponents such as Mercedes and Ferrari still had to deal with projects born under the wrong star . However, this year the Red seems to have made a small leap forward, creating a car that in the first three rounds of the season seemed very balanced in the chasing group, while McLaren, Aston Martin and Mercedes have clear strengths, but also rather obvious weaknesses.

Max Verstappen's retirement in Australia allowed Lando Norris to conquer the first podium of the season, followed in fourth place by teammate Oscar Piastri, with a McLaren which, although not far from Ferrari, did not have the pace of the Ferrari team. Maranello. There is great confidence for Suzuka, especially because it was one of the best tracks in 2023 for the MCL60, which excelled in the snake area where it is essential to have a reactive aerodynamic platform.

The MCL38 did not represent a revolution started from a blank sheet of paper, but was designed as an evolution of last year's car, which is why it also retained some of its weak points. As anticipated in the in-depth analysis, the new single-seater also suffers from understeer in the slower sections, has low top speeds and still shows some difficulty in very long corners, where you have to spend a lot of time operating the steering wheel. A first step to try to resolve these weaknesses should be made between Miami and Imola, when McLaren should bring its first substantial package of updates.

However, Team Principal Andrea Stella warned that fully resolving the MCL38's weaknesses will likely require at least another 12 months of development. “We are extremely happy with the pace we have maintained on development over the last 12 months, but I would say we need another 12 months of development to make a car that is strong in terms of DRS efficiency and in long corners,” explained the engineer Italian.

“Around the sixth or seventh race we should bring a first package of updates and hopefully there will be a couple of them over the course of the season. It will take the whole season to improve performance to get to a point where we can say we won't see these anymore. weak points because these areas have improved.”

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, 3rd position

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Stella is not surprised that McLaren failed to resolve the weaknesses in the winter: firstly, the initially set development goals were not achieved, so these difficulties were not entirely unexpected. Furthermore, it is normal for a project, an evolution of the previous one, to maintain some strengths and weaknesses, attempting to smooth out the latter step by step, not to mention that, clearly, the other teams do not stand idly by either. What may be considered a step forward for one team may clash with the fact that another team was able to make even greater progress.

“Eliminating weak points coincides with the development of a car. It's not that you have these weak points because something goes wrong. There is nothing wrong, the car is not sufficiently developed and these aspects manifest themselves, such as example the weakness in long corners or the lack of speed in the DRS. But this is actually a consequence of the development. If you ask me how the car behaves, I tell you that it goes very well. It does exactly what we expect from the wind tunnel.” .

Today, the Woking team itself also announced an internal reorganization, bidding farewell to David Sanchez, who arrived at McLaren only a few months ago. The French engineer found himself covering a different role than the one he had been expected by the team when he was hired, which is why it was decided to follow different paths.