McLaren has explained how the “inherent” characteristics of the Bahrain circuit had a role in Lando Norris’ report that the team’s 2025 Formula 1 car is unstable at the rear.
The Woking-based squad concluded pre-season testing regarded as the team in the driving seat as Norris punched in a headline race simulation on the second day.
Norris lapped on average more than five-tenths quicker a lap than his rivals in both the Ferrari and the Mercedes across a comparable race run that spanned three stints.
However, the Briton admitted the MCL39, which includes several innovations to depart from its title-winning predecessor, had an instability on the rear axle through cornering.
But McLaren boss Andrea Stella was not concerned as he highlighted how the rear-limited nature of the track used for testing exasperated the sliding Norris experienced.
“I think the comment of Lando related to the rear instability, they are fair,” Stella told media including Motorsport Week.
“At the same time, when you come to Bahrain, I would be very, very surprised that you don’t have a rear-end limitation and traction limitation.
“So somehow these limitations are inherent to the circuit at which we are operating.”
McLaren insists instability won’t ‘disappear’ with current cars
Stella revealed McLaren has succeeded in making the MCL39 more predictable, but nervous tendencies will be impossible to eradicate with the current generation cars.
“Definitely, they were an objective of our development and according to what we have seen so far and the data that we had through car development, if anything, we think we have improved from this point of view,” he added.
“But you improve always by a quantity that is never going to make these kinds of problems disappear.
“The only time in which I saw something changing as dramatically as there are no problems with traction anymore, now the car actually pushes in traction, is when we added the exhaust effect.
“When you go back to 2011-2012, I remember I was at my previous team [Ferrari], we introduced the exhaust effect from one session to the other and the car was like, no problem with traction anymore. It’s a dramatic change of aerodynamic behaviour.
“But within what you can do inside the scope of the regulations, which is fixed, then you’re always going to suffer the same limitation, but ultimately you need to try and reduce those limitations more and more.”
The areas McLaren are striving to improve
Stella divulged that McLaren is also working hard in the background to improve the car’s front-end responsiveness through cornering alongside tempering the rear-end instability.
Asked to expand on Norris’ comments about the car, he replied: “I’m half laughing because the comments were exactly like the rear-end is sliding!
So that was definitely the first thing he said straight. Not only jumping off the car but also during the stints.
“When we were experiencing [tyre] degradation, that was the main mechanism. Like I say, no surprise in Bahrain.
“But it would be incomplete to say that we only want to improve rear grip in terms of stability in entry and traction.
“We also want to improve the behaviour of the car in mid-corner in terms of front-end.
“And if anything, these three attributes is what we’ve been trying to improve over these last couple of years. And now we enter the third season.
“And like I said before, you sort of have an aspiration to remove them entirely.
“But in reality, it’s just a game of who mitigate these limitations the most which are inherent to a Formula 1 car and especially to a Formula 1 car in a track with this kind of layout.”
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