McLaren unveil latest MCL38 upgrade plan ahead of F1’s return

Michelle Foster 14 Oct 2024 7:30 AM

Lando Norris in the McLaren MCL38.

Faced with the conundrum of risking a misstep by upgrading the MCL38 or falling backwards if they don’t, Andrea Stella says McLaren will “trust the process” that’s worked so well for them this season.

Having introduced a big package back at the Miami Grand Prix, McLaren kept that same floor on the car for the next 12 races, only introducing minor tweaks to the edges.

McLaren facing update dilemma ahead of United States GP

Instead, they’ve focused on optimising the rest of the package, upgrading the car’s wings, brake ducts, bodywork and suspension elements.

In doing so the MCL38 has emerged as the car to beat and McLaren have seized control of the Constructors’ Championship in the process, taking a 41-point lead over Red Bull.

But a new floor could, according to rumours, arrive at the United States Grand Prix where McLaren and their rivals are expected to unleash their next big round of upgrades.

For Stella, having watched Lando Norris dominate the Singapore Grand Prix to win by 21 seconds ahead of Max Verstappen in an MCL38 that was clearly in the sweet spot, the decision to update the car or not is a dilemma.

“In fairness, that was one of my thoughts after the race,” he told the media after the Singapore race, “because we do have some stuff in the pipeline.

“Obviously, when you have this kind of performance on track you always approach things from a cautious point of view in terms of development.

“At the same time, we need to trust the process. We need to trust the way we’ve been working so far.

“I’ve said already that we have taken our time to make sure that once we deliver trackside we have done the due diligence. So I don’t think this will change our plans.”

F1 2024: Team-mate head-to-head stats

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Stella concedes that if McLaren were to sit still, rivals’ potential gains with their upgrades would make it look as if the MCL38 had gone backwards especially as he feels the Singapore result was flattering to McLaren.

“In Formula 1 I’m not sure you can back off too much because backing off means that the others may catch and we don’t know what the plans of the others are,” he continued.

“In Red Bull, we see that at a track in which they thought they would have not been very competitive, ultimately they were potentially second best.

“I think we haven’t seen Ferrari very well but even Ferrari, P1, P2, they seem to be as fast as us and the final stint of [Charles] Leclerc is very competitive.

“So I think the race may give us a little bit of a flattering, I think you say it like this. The situation from a competitiveness point of view, I would say we need to keep being aggressive in terms of development.”

Norris’ victory in Singapore, his biggest winning margin to date, saw him close the gap to Verstappen to just 52 points with 180 still in play in the race for the World title.

McLaren