McLaren to persist with new Mercedes-style nose concept in Portugal

Andreas Seidl has confirmed McLaren is to continue with its new nose package for this weekend's Portuguese Grand Prix.

The Mercedes-style concept was first unveiled at the Russian Grand Prix and raced again last time out at the Nürburgring.

The advantages have been difficult to quantify for the team, however, particularly at the Eifel Grand Prix that was reduced to a two-day format due to heavy fog on Friday cancelling both practice sessions.

With a more regular weekend in the offing at Portimão's Algarve International Circuit, McLaren will continue to race with the nose, as well as bringing additional updates.

Looking ahead to this weekend, Seidl said: "Our focus since Germany has been on analysing and understanding the data we gathered at the Nürburgring so that we come to the right conclusions and find the best way to progress.

"Based on that analysis we will continue to use our new nose box aero concept combined with a known competitive car configuration.

"We will continue to bring more new upgrades to the car to test on Friday and also further explore and quantify our new aero concept."

Seidl made clear after the race at the Nürburgring that he felt his team was heading in the right direction with its updates, despite the bad weather and a lack of running hampering the data gathering.

“In the end, we strongly believe in this new concept of the different nose box but it is obviously quite a significant change in terms of the aero concept," said Seidl.

"It was clear to us that we need time to exploit the true potential of that package. We were hoping for good conditions on Friday [at the Eifel GP] to find the sweet spot of the car with it.

“Unfortunately not having dry running on Friday and the short session on Saturday morning, where it was difficult to see what the package was doing because the track was green, it evolved a lot during the session and we also had to get a lot of laps in for the drivers to get used to the track, meant we didn’t manage to make the next step with this package.

"We have collected a lot of data which will hopefully help us to understand how we can release its potential.”

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