McLaren raises its head
After winning two Constructors’ Championships and one Drivers’ Championship in the last two seasons, McLaren approached the new technical cycle of F1 with many difficulties. In China, in fact, the Woking team failed to start the GP with either world champion Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri: a blunder for the papaya team, who paid for faults not their own in Shanghai.
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The problems with the electrical part of the power unit were understood and resolved thanks to work in harmony with Mercedes. Work that team principal Andrea Stella wanted to emphasize in the Friday press conference at Suzuka to silence rumors of a “conspiracy” by the power unit supplier against the world champion customers.
Stella’s words
“In China we saw an exceptional situation. We understood the cause of the battery failures (Norris changed it at Suzuka, while Piastri didn’t need to, ed.), they happened practically at the same moment of the weekend but were different. We worked together with Mercedes HPP to investigate the problem, I think it has now been understood. We have 100% confidence in them, they have very high standards. They will certainly carry out the necessary actions to prevent the failure from happening again“, this is the comment from the engineer from Orvieto. “Today we used the power unit in a more fluid way, it is the result of constant improvement in our learning. I believe that now the gap is rather small on the power unit side, and it will be increasingly so race after race. Mercedes works and learns with us, does not hide information and there is maximum sharing. We just need to make up for the delay in timing, because the delivery of the MCL40 happened at the last minute, and the same happened for the engine manufacturers. So, in this case it is relatively normal that customers tend to be a bit disadvantaged“.
“I think the MCL40 is a platform with very high potential“, he added. “At the moment, if we compare it with Ferrari and Mercedes, it has a slight grip deficit in corners. And compared to Mercedes we are exploiting the power unit a bit less. But in China it went better than in Australia, we are learning quickly how to exploit the engine to the maximum; and on the chassis we know exactly what to do to improve it“. McLaren should indeed bring updates within the next two appointments, namely Miami and Montreal.
