McLaren’s Dutch GP upgrade “nowhere near” as significant as Miami package

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella downplayed the significance of the upgrade package the team introduced at the last race.

He said the team’s latest revisions to its MCL38 were not as significant as those it brought to the Miami Grand Prix, which were credited with turning its season around. As championship leaders Red Bull ran into difficulties developing their car, McLaren have surged to the front, setting the quickest overall lap time at four of the last six rounds.

However Stella said their Zandvoort upgrade is more modest than the one which arrived at Miami.

“We’ve been able to deliver another substantial upgrade, which is nowhere near as large as the one that we took to Miami, but it should be hopefully noticeable in terms of aerodynamic efficiency of the car,” he said.

“We took our time after Miami to see [its] development and convince ourselves that we needed to press the green light and deliver parts trackside. Also nowadays you have limitations in terms of cost, so you just can’t bring everything to test at trackside, you need to be diligent.”

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Further upgrades are planned in the near future, including at the uniquely fast Monza circuit this weekend.

“There will be a few more [upgrades] in the coming races and hopefully this will help us improve the performance of the car overall and keep competing for good results in the race.”

Although McLaren won by an emphatic margin at the Hungaroring, prior to their latest upgrade, Stella believes the scale of their advantage has been exaggerated, partly because they tend to perform better than their rivals earlier in a race weekend.

“I think there’s been a bit of overstatement about the performance of the car,” he said. “This could have been because we have been competitive on many Fridays and I thought that this was more the result of the good work in terms of preparation that the team do and being ready straight away for a race weekend. Then we see that Red Bull and Mercedes kind of resolve their issues and become competitive on Saturday or on a Sunday.

“I think this was very apparent in Austria. On Friday, we were just a few milliseconds off Verstappen. On Saturday, he was four tenths ahead of everybody. And in the race, he was the fastest car.

“So I think we should be a little careful in thinking that McLaren goes to the races and has the fastest car, and separate it from like, ‘oh, we are exploiting the car. We are getting the most out of it and therefore we are readily competitive’.

“Saying that, we are pleased with what we’ve been able to achieve in terms of competitiveness of the car. And like I said before, I hope that these extra developments and upgrades will give us the possibility to retain this competitive position. Because in fairness, since Miami, we had not brought much lap time to the car itself.”

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