F1 chief warns ISSUES may not be fixed by start of 2025

Oscar Piastri, Logan Sargeant, Bahrain GP, McLaren, Williams, 2024 — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 News

F1 chief warns ISSUES may not be fixed by start of 2025

An F1 boss has estimated it will take their team '12 months' to fix their 'weaknesses'.

Sheona Mountford

Tuesday 2 April 2024 09:12

An F1 team boss has said it will take ‘12 months’ to fix his team's weaknesses on track.

After a shock DNF from Max Verstappen at the Australian Grand Prix over a week ago, Ferrari are now within reach of Red Bull in both championships.

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A victory from Carlos Sainz and a first McLaren podium in 2024 has given some F1 fans hope there will be a battle at the front.

However, not all teams enjoyed a successful outing, with both Mercedes cars failing to finish, Lewis Hamilton not only being off the pace in qualifying but suffering from an engine failure in the race.

Carlos Sainz, Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc Australian GP 2024

McLaren boss projects long road to fix weaknesses

Despite achieving a podium in Australia, McLaren still have some way to go before they close in on Ferrari let alone Red Bull.

Speaking to Autosport team boss Andrea Stella said: "We are extremely happy with the rate of development over the last 12 months, but there's, I would say, another 12 months' development that we need to go through to actually offer a car that is strong in DRS and is strong in the long corners.

"Around race six or seven we should have a decent round of upgrades, and hopefully there will be potentially a couple of them throughout the season.

"It will take the whole season to actually add enough performance and say we don't see these weaknesses anymore because these areas have improved."

Whilst identifying areas for improvement, Stella also remained positive about McLaren’s package in 2024.

"Erasing the weaknesses is car development," he said. "It's not like you have these weaknesses because something goes wrong.

"There's nothing going wrong, the car is not developed enough and these aspects expose themselves, like you become weak in long corners or you don't have enough speed in DRS.

"But this is effectively a consequence of the development. If you ask me how is the car behaving, I say very well, like it goes as expected.

"It does exactly what we expect from the wind tunnel. It does what we expect from the computer development."

Red Bull Max Verstappen Lewis Hamilton Ferrari Mercedes McLaren