McLaren to continue upgrades in Ferrari battle

McLaren

McLaren to continue upgrades in Ferrari battle

McLaren is just two points clear in third after five rounds

Ewan Gale

Thursday 3 June 2021 08:00

Team principal Andreas Seidl has indicated McLaren will continue to update the MCL35M in a bid to stave off the threat of Ferrari over third in F1's constructors' standings.

McLaren started the season strongly thanks largely to the stellar performances from Lando Norris, but Ferrari fought back with pace in Spain and Monaco to keep the deficit at just two points.

“What is encouraging for us to see is simply that it looks like we have a car that is competitive on all kinds of tracks which I think puts us in a good position to generally fight for this P3 this year against a very strong Ferrari team and that is encouraging," said Seild.

Article continues under video

“We will keep developing this car as well. We are still planning to bring upgrades in the next races as well in order to make sure we stay ahead of the Ferraris.

"That is the goal for this season without losing sight of the big task we have to do at the moment which is getting next year’s car ready under the new regulations.”

McLaren sit tight on flexi-wing debate

The talk gripping the F1 paddock since the Spanish Grand Prix has been centred around the flexi-wings spotted first on the Red Bulls.

Ferrari has since announced that they have been "exploiting" the wings after the FIA declared load tests would become stricter from only the French event, Mercedes stated its intentions that legal action could take place.

With Aston Martin suggesting similar action, Seidl added: “Obviously, we are independent of what Mercedes is doing.

"We are absolutely not happy that cars that from our point of view are clearly not within the regulations after it got detected that they are not regulations, that our competitors can keep running these cars."