Something has changed in McLaren and this can be seen from the fact that after Canada there was more disappointment than satisfaction at the end of a race that Lando Norris could have even won. Only a few months ago a podium and a fifth place would have been taken as a more than positive result to be celebrated but from Miami onwards the MCL38 was on average the fastest car on the track, also and above all in terms of competitiveness with both drivers. Thus a change of mentality also occurred within the team and in fact, already on the eve of the Grand Prix, Lando Norris had underlined how he was one of the drivers with the most points in the last races and that McLaren had shown that it could win several times between Miami and Canada.
The disappointment at the end of the Canadian race is testimony to McLaren’s growth
“This small disappointment for a lack of victory is proof that the team has come a long way and now we are constantly fighting for the podium and also for the victory” Team Principal Andrea Stella commented after the Canadian Grand Prix. Since the introduction of the last major upgrade package in Miami, the MCL38 has won in Florida, finished second at Imola, less than a second behind Max Verstappen, surprised in Monaco by competing for victory with Ferrari and in Canada has shown the important progress in slow and efficient, as well as confirming good strength in the wet. The Papaya car is proving to be extremely versatile and competitive in all conditions as well as in terms of line up, an aspect not to be underestimated especially for the Manufacturers. “Norris and Piastri are the best driver duo on the grid” Helmut Marko, close rival of the Woking team, recently said. In fact, Stella can count on two drivers who have always brought points to the team up to now and who, with Leclerc’s retirement in Canada, are the only two left to have finished all the races this season, an important variable from a Constructors’ World Championship perspective. . In fact, the growth of Piastri is also satisfactory: “Oscar now competes at such a level that he is often in battle with the best. Fighting for podiums and victories is also very important to continue growing” Stella said.
The Italian Team Principal can be happy with the team’s progress, putting aside the disappointment that denotes an important ambition, given that his men are making an MCL38 perform at its best which also responds positively to the changes. The result is a gap that is almost eliminated from the top. Spain will be an important test to see the MCL38 on such a testing and challenging circuit in terms of tire usage and that overheating often present at Montmelò, has at least been mitigated compared to the start of the season. However, not everything is perfect at Mclaren yet. “We have to make the car even faster, because in Canada the Mercedes was faster than us in the dry” Stella immediately clarified. Furthermore, in these first races, although well executed, the wall and the McLaren strategy were not always impeccable, leading to the loss of some points and making the possibility of victory more complicated. In Woking, however, they have very clear ideas about the work to be done.
No big upgrade package in Spain on the MCL38
McLaren’s growth path has been very important and linear. At the beginning of 2023, the Italian team principal had asked for time to put a competitive car on the track, having delayed winter development in order to undertake a new design path necessary after the anti-porpoising regulatory changes of summer 2022. The Austrian package immediately proved to be a huge step forward which made the MCL60 move from the lower parts of the ranking to compete for important results with Red Bull and Ferrari, bypassing Mercedes and Aston Martin. From there on it was continuous progress with two more major update packages which have given an important performance boost: we are talking about Singapore 2023 and the last one Miami 2024with a very important winter development in the middle and which was a preparatory basis for what we then saw in Florida.
The development philosophy pursued up to now will undergo some changesas Andrea Stella announced given that, at least in Spain and in the next events, we will no longer see large development packages on the MCL38but something more gradual “We will have some updates in Spain but it will not be a big update like the ones we have brought in the last year. We will bring individual components that can give us a little additional performance, without waiting to have a complete package to bring everything together” explained the Italian engineer. One of the most important factors enjoyed by the technical part of the Woking team is certainly trust, as Andrea Stella himself underlined. This pushes all technicians to work with conviction and serenity, aware that the path taken is the right one, having also developed and refined their knowledge on that important correlation between factory tools and the track.. “With confidence you are more energetic, you work harder because you see results, and you like that and want even more. However, the basis of everything is the quality of the work and this is the type of mentality we want to maintain” Andrea Stella made it known.
