McLaren urged to quicken pace for vital upgrades

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella wants the team to begin to “accelerate” its upgrade development to bring vital parts to the car.

Whilst the team was able to strongly develop through 2023 with its MCL60 challenger, it did not quite take the leap forward it hoped over the winter with the new MCL38, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri reporting similar weaknesses between the cars.

McLaren has had a long-standing weakness in its package slower corners, which is opposed to its strong form through high-speed sections of track, with Stella sure that a package is coming within the first third of the 24 race season.

However, the Italian wants to see the pace upped by the Woking team to deliver parts quicker.

“Not in terms of understanding the root cause, we do understand the root cause but it is taking a few weeks to deliver the projects that would address it,” Stella told media including RacingNews365 if it was concerning that the MCL38 is not quite the package Norris and Piastri require.

“Definitely some of the projects have to do with an area of the car, I won’t say which area, but it hasn’t been improved very much since last year, and effectively, this one is the same as last year.

“Hopefully soon, we will be able to deliver these new components, I won’t say which components, but we see in development that it will help, but we haven’t delivered it trackside yet.

“If we didn’t see it in background development, I would be concerned, but we will see the improvement.

“We need to accelerate the process to deliver trackside. It will be a few more races, but hopefully it will be within the first third of the season [before Monaco].”