McLaren has brought a heavily revised MCL38 to this weekend’s F1 Miami Grand Prix.
The Woking-based squad, fresh off of a second-place finish with Lando Norris in Shanghai is banking on bedding in 10 updates in a single session of practice on Friday before Sprint Qualifying gets underway.
A new floor is the cornerstone of the almost completely revised McLaren car, with the MCL38 also sporting a brand new front wing, front suspension and a new engine cover.
In addition, McLaren has brought a revised sidepod inlet and revised brake ducts and winglets at both the front and rear of the car.
McLaren has also incorporated an offloaded beamwing to cope with the specific demands of the Miami International Autodrome circuit.
Updated rear suspension and cooling louvres round out the revisions made to McLaren’s 2024 challenger.
Speaking in Thursday’s Miami GP press conference, Oscar Piastri, who is only receiving half of the updates said they “should be a good step forward, hopefully.
“Obviously on a Sprint weekend, it makes it a little bit more difficult to get the most out of them, because you’ve only got one practice session, but yeah it should hopefully be a decent step forward.
“I think last year we had some upgrades in Baku, which was the race before Miami, and then we had a shocker here last year.
“So we’ll have to wait and see if this track kind of suits us, because last year we chopped and changed quite a bit.
“Trying to stay on the trajectory from last year is what we’re aiming to do.
“But, you know, obviously as you get closer and closer to the limit of these cars and these regs, it becomes harder and harder to do. So we’ll see.
“But yeah, I think the upgrades we pulled off last year always worked well. So yeah, hopefully we can have a similar kind of effect this year.”
Championship leaders Red Bull are positioned at the other end of the updates spectrum in Miami, having brought just a single change to the RB20 by removing a support on the floor edge to save weight.
Ferrari meanwhile hasn’t brought any update to Miami as it plans to bring a revised SF-24 car to Imola instead.
Mercedes and Aston Martin, like McLaren, have also elected to bring an update package to Miami.
The Silver Arrows have brought a revised floor to the W15 and made small tweaks to the front suspension, in addition to making circuit-specific changes to its 2024 charger.
These come in the form of extra cooling louvres to cope with the Miami heat and a reduced chord front wing flap to balance with a low-drag rear wing setup.
At Aston Martin, the changes have all been made in tandem with F1’s arrival in Florida and the characteristics of the temporary street circuit woven around the Hard Rock Stadium.
The front, beam and rear wing on the AMR24 have all been adapted for a lower drag specification this weekend and the Silverstone-based squad has also made changes to allow for better engine and driver cooling.
In the lower half of the Championship order, Alpine has elected not to make and further changes to the A524, but Pierre Gasly has inherited the updated-spec car that team-mate Esteban Ocon debuted in Shanghai.
RB has made changes to its floor and rear diffuser in a bid to maintain its challenge on the fringe of the points, meanwhile, Haas has opted for a more aggressive diffuser expansion in the floor of the VF-24.
Sauber has brought modified circuit-specific wing setups at the front and rear of the C44 and Williams has made a performance-related modification to the trim on the trailing edge of the FW46’s front wing.
