McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella believes that the team’s planned upgrades for Baku won’t offer a drastic change from its lacklustre early season performance.
Stella has also downplayed McLaren’s double points finish at the Australian Grand Prix.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri finished sixth and eighth respectively in Melbourne after an incident filled race saw three red flag stoppages.
The team now sit fifth in the Constructors’ Championship after their first points finish of the season.
Ahead of the event in Melbourne, McLaren was rooted to the bottom of the Constructors’ Championship following disappointing outings in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
McLaren is optimistic about being competitive for regular point-finishes later in the season, but Stella conceded that it would require additional upgrades beyond their planned improvements in Baku to reverse the direction of their season so far.
“We don’t get carried away, we know it was a very eventful race,” Stella said.
“It’s good to score points after we have had some difficult races at the start of the season in which we were in contention to score points but for various reasons, we couldn’t.”
Stella became Team Principal of the Woking-based squad in December following the departure of Andreas Seidl, who became CEO of the Sauber Group.
Seidl’s departure came at a time when McLaren had hit a major stumbling block in aerodynamic development, which the team said has compromised the aerodynamic performance of the MCL60 for the opening rounds on the calendar.
“It’s good now to come off these races with some good points,” Stella said. “We know that in Baku we start another step of this season by starting to have some upgrades on the car.
“We know it is not going to be a game changer, but it will be a first step for what we hope will be multiple upgrades. We hope we’ll be in contention to fight for points in the future on merit and not in eventful races.”
