McLaren F1 chief Andrea Stella raises alarm over 2024 launch car issues

Brown en Stella in Montreal — Photo: © LAT Images

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McLaren F1 chief raises alarm over 2024 launch car issues

The MCL38 may still require a great deal of work after its launch

Matthew Hobkinson Lead Editor

F1 Editor & Journalist

Tuesday 23 January 2024 18:57

McLaren F1 team principal Andrea Stella has admitted that some issues the team found towards the end of 2023 may not be rectified by the start of this season.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri found themselves languishing at the back of the pack at the start of last year in a car that proved to be remarkably uncompetitive.

Yet a mid-season upgrade on Norris's MCL60 at the Austrian Grand Prix proved to be the catalyst for the team's charge up the grid, eventually finishing P4 in the constructors' standings.

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However, it was not always smooth sailing for McLaren. As the season drew to a close it became apparent that, when pushed to the limit, the MCL60 had a tendency to become erratic – particularly in qualifying.

The MCL60 improved remarkably as the 2023 season progressed

Yet some qualifying performances raised concerns over the car's reliability when on the edge

And Stella has now revealed that the team were looking at the trade-off in race pace versus qualifying performance, something that McLaren are not certain has been entirely ironed out heading into 2024.

Stella: McLaren launch car may still need work

"We definitely questioned ourselves – whether we had made the car quicker, but somehow slightly more difficult to be exploited when you go to the limit in qualifying," he told Motorsport.com.

“We have looked at, first of all, confirming whether this question was fair or if it was just kind of random episodes but not actually correlated from a technical point of view.

“We think that definitely there’s some areas that we could have looked into, and they affect the aerodynamics side.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella will be eager to get on top of the issue as quickly as possible

And Stella went on to admit that not all the fruits of their labour will be felt when the car rolls down the garage for the first time in 2024.

“Some of the benefits may be embedded onto the launch car," he added. "But actually some of the projects belong to a workstream that may land trackside with some other developments.

“Some things require a few months to be addressed, let’s say.”

Max Verstappen Lando Norris Christian Horner Oscar Piastri Zak Brown Austrian Grand Prix