Andrea Stella has confirmed upgrades are on the way for McLaren over the next few races but is going to let the FIA provide the “surprise”.
The next round of upgrades for the McLaren MCL38 will be made soon, team boss Andrea Stella has confirmed, but the nature of the updates will only be revealed by the FIA’s upgrade documents when the time comes.
Andrea Stella confirms McLaren ‘stuff’ coming
Having drip-fed some smaller upgrade steps to the MCL38 since the more significant upgrade package rolled out in Miami, another larger step upgrade is expected to be introduced by McLaren before season end.
That’s according to team boss Andrea Stella, who light-heartedly declined to reveal the nature of the updates as he spoke to media after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which was won by McLaren’s Oscar Piastri.
The MCL38 has become F1’s benchmark car through the middle part of the season, performing as the most consistent of the top four teams as Piastri and Lando Norris have grown accustomed to podiums and victories as a major title push is on the cards.
“We are definitely working on upgrades for this season,” Stella confirmed.
“We are now finalising this. I don’t want to disclose too much in terms of what and when, but we do have a plan to make the car faster.
“Whether we will be able to do it or not, we will see, because I think we have seen that, at this level of development, it is not an easy task to actually change the specification of the car and get it to work as you expect in your development tools, but that’s also why we took a bit more time to try and make sure that what we bring trackside is successful.”
With every team required to submit descriptions of tweaked or upgraded components to the FIA, who collate the data to publish on Friday mornings of each Grand Prix weekend, Stella said it’ll be a case of waiting to read said document to discover what McLaren is cooking.
“Yes, I can confirm that we have some stuff coming for the next races,” he said, laughing that “We will see!” when pushed as to whether that may be at this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.
“I will let the surprise be in the [FIA] document when they are published.”
More on Andrea Stella and McLaren
Andrea Stella: Leading Constructors’ Championship a ‘milestone’ for McLaren
McLaren’s victory in Azerbaijan moved the Woking-based squad into the lead of the Constructors’ Championship, overtaking Red Bull to open up a 20-point lead.
It’s the first time since the 2014 Australian Grand Prix – in which Jenson Button and Kevin Magnussen finished second and third in the season opener – that McLaren has led the title chase as the team pursues its first Constructors Championship since 1998.
The ever-practical Stella said that he isn’t giving the achievement much thought at this moment in time.
“I think if I looked at it for a second as a milestone, then it’s definitely huge,” he said.
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