McLaren Team Principal Believes a Comeback Is Possible, Hints at Strong Upgrade Cycle

During the test, as well as the practice and qualifying sessions at the season’s first Gran Prix, it became clear that the Woking-based team was struggling. The car just generated too much drag for its uncompetitive levels of downforce.

Granted, there is a short-term solution for that to somewhat mitigate the deficit, which is not ideal in the world of Formula 1. The team can adjust the setup toward lower levels of downforce, thus reducing drag. But that comes at the cost of losing speed in the corners while becoming faster on the straight.

So, something has to change, upgrades must come in. And from the looks of things, McLaren is capable of fixing this issue, as they faced a similar one last year and managed to rectify it to a degree. While the team still lost the fourth-place battle with Alpine it ended the season in a much better spot compared to where it started in Bahrain. 

And if last year is anything to go by, this season things should go even smoother, as both a new wind tunnel and simulator are coming down the pipeline for the British racing outfit. Keep in mind, that this will happen a long time from now, during the summer break.

Regardless, McLaren insists that it can make a comeback and that the car is “alive” when it comes to upgrades and aero testing results. According to the team principal, Andrea Stella, some areas of the car are known to allow good improvement, although the team has not been able to integrate them in the launch spec.

Stella reiterated the fact that upgrade packages will keep coming for McLaren, with the first one, which is supposed to be major, coming in right in time for the fourth race in Baku, Azerbaijan. The team principal added that McLaren is in a position where it can out-develop its competitors thanks to talented team members and a car with great scope for improvements.

To help make a point, Stella noted that the team was able to recover from a significant deficit in past seasons. But that does not tell the entire story, as that happened in 2009 and 2012 respectively.

Back then, McLaren was in a much better spot, benefiting from a more competitive infrastructure compared to rivals. Right now, however, things are different and McLaren finds itself on the back foot. The infrastructure upgrades are not yet in place and the team is still recovering from a disastrous stint in the turbo-hybrid era.

That is compounded by another major issue, the budget, and aero restrictions, which did not exist in the seasons mentioned by Stella, making McLaren’s job much more difficult now.