McLaren has admitted that it is “not entirely happy’ with the MCL60 car in its current form, following its launch from Woking on Monday.
The team enters the 2023 campaign having finished fifth in the Constructors’ standings last year, missing out on the ‘best of the rest’ slot to Alpine.
McLaren’s car on display at its launch features notable changes compared to its predecessor, including an aggressive sidepod system, while other parts such as the front wing appear almost unchanged.
Andrea Stella, who has been promoted to the Team Principal role for the new year, is confident that McLaren has addressed aerodynamic woes from last year – but has eyed up in-season upgrades to further enhance performance.
“We have to say that assessing our performance last year and looking at competitors, we identified multiple areas of opportunities,” he said.
“The good news is that pretty much all of them have been addressed. I wouldn’t want to be too specific, but certainly they have to do predominantly with the aerodynamics.
“Aerodynamics is the name of the game in F1, so no mystery. But there’s some areas, for instance, interaction with the tyres, there’s some work that we needed to do and this was done over the winter.
“There’s some areas of the car that will be interested by development in the early stage of the season. We are happy – not entirely happy for what is the launch car – but optimistic that it should take a good step soon.”
Stella added that McLaren was not able to leap upon some key areas of development early when it came to the construction of the MCL60, leaving it somewhat behind ahead of the new season.
“It is always difficult to translate what you see over the winter in terms of development to where you’re going to be in terms of pecking order,” he said. “But we try to relate this to ourselves.
“Like I said before, I think while we are happy with the development of the car in most of the areas, there’s some areas in which we kind of realised a little late in development, some really strong directions.
“So not necessarily we have been able to capitalise on this direction in the very short term.
“That’s why also I talk about the developments coming after the start of the season. So in this sense, I just invoke realism.
“In a way, it’s more relative to ourselves. But it’s such a competitive game that I would be surprised if [we are there straight away]. Normally you need to be totally happy and totally at the top of what you can do to achieve your targets.”
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