McLaren admits to dilemma over F1 upgrade plan
McLaren has admitted that it faces a dilemma over whether to introduce floor upgrades to its dominant MCL38 Formula 1 car.
The Woking-based team was in a class of its own at the Singapore Grand Prix, with Lando Norris running unchallenged to take victory over Max Verstappen.
McLaren’s form, which has helped it lead the constructors’ championship, comes off the back of it being cautious with its upgrade plans – and sticking with a floor design that it first introduced back in Miami.
This is an approach that is in contrast to many of its rivals, including Red Bull, Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin, who have tried upgraded floor designs but encountered balance problems that held them back.
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But while McLaren’s current package appears to be working well, especially on high downforce venues like Singapore, team boss Andrea Stella says it is not certain that it can stick to what it has right now.
With many of its closest competitors all set to unleash their next updates at the United States Grand Prix, McLaren concedes there is a risk that if it plays safe and sticks with its current package it could fall back.
It has been working on a development step for its car back at its factory, but wants to be sure that it works before committing to racing it.
Asked about the dilemma the team now faced on whether to go for upgrades now or not, Stella said: “In fairness, that was one of my thoughts after the race.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, comes in for a stop
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
“We do have some stuff in the pipeline, and obviously, when you have this kind of performance on track, you always may approach things from a cautious point of view in terms of development.
“But at the same time, we need to trust the process. We need to trust the way we’ve been working so far.
“I’ve said already that we have taken our time to make sure that once we deliver track side, we have done the due diligence. So, I don’t think this will change our plans.”
Stella thinks that, despite McLaren’s advantage, it will not take much for its rivals to leap ahead if they bring upgrades that work.
“In Formula 1, I’m not sure you can back off too much, because backing off means that the others may catch up,” he said.
“And we don’t know what the plans of the others are. Red Bull, we see that in a track in which they thought they would not have been very competitive ultimately, they were potentially second best.
“And I think we haven’t seen Ferrari [at its best], as even in P1, P2, they seemed to be as fast as us.
“So, I think this race may have been a bit flattering. The situation from a competitiveness point of view, I would say we need to keep being aggressive in terms of development.”
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 2nd position, the McLaren trophy delegate, Lando Norris, McLaren F1 Team, 1st position, Oscar Piastri, McLaren F1 Team, 3rd position, spray Champagne on the podium
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images
McLaren chief designer Rob Marshall says that the team’s plan was to make sure that any upgrade it did bring helped produce a big step.
“It’s about chasing downforce all the time,” he said. “We kind of like to gather the chunks up and deliver it in a big hit.
“So far we’ve just been focusing on basically gathering those bits up. At some point hopefully we’ll have another upgrade to deliver.
“In a way it’s nice to be delivering lots of little upgrades all the time, a bit like our beam wing here this weekend
“But equally sometimes you just have to hold on a little bit while you wait for a chunk of bits to come all at the same time.
“The advantage in doing that is that often bits don’t combine very well, or as well as you think they would. And if you deliver them in one lump, then that sort of combination of parts has been in CFD together, it was developed together, it’s been through the wind tunnel together, so you can be more confident that combination of bits works well together.
“Whereas if you do it bit by bit, you might introduce an upgrade on one part and then work on another part and find out actually it’s a bit compromised by the previous change you made.”
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