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By Alex Harrington
Sports Contributing Writer
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McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has indicated that a further year of development is needed to improve the team's Formula 1 car. Despite significant improvement last season, the current model still falls short in key areas.
Continuing from a season of noteworthy progress, McLaren has faced a reality check regarding the evolution of its 2024 machinery, the MCL38. Stella, the team's Italian chief, has shed light on the ongoing development hurdles, suggesting that another year is needed to compete with those at the front of the grid. Last year, McLaren demonstrated a remarkable turnaround, moving from difficulty in scoring points to consistently challenging for podiums behind Red Bull. This positive trend has been partially maintained into the early stages of 2024, with Lando Norris securing the team's first podium at the Australian Grand Prix since 2014.
Despite this early success, it appears that Red Bull remains firmly ahead of the Woking squad, while Ferrari has also jumped ahead. The Scuderia has consistently trailed their RB20 competition, with drivers Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc utilising Max Verstappen's DNF in Australia to secure a 1-2 finish for the team.
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After difficult races in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Norris highlighted a "significant" gap to rivals, particularly in slow-speed corners and DRS-aided top speed, underscoring the MCL38's areas of vulnerability.
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Stella, as quoted by Motorsport Week, said the following on his team's development targets:
"It's not like you have these weaknesses because something goes wrong. There's nothing going wrong, it's just the car is not developed enough and these aspects expose themselves into you become weak in long corners or you don't have enough speed in DRS.
"But this is effectively a consequence of the development. There's nothing going wrong."
Stella, adamant that his car is behaving how the team expected it to, assured fans that they simply need to "raise the operating point from a performance point of view, aerodynamic efficiency, mechanical grip and so on". He continued:
"So we are extremely happy with the rate of development over the last 12 months but there's, I would say, another 12 months [of] development that we need to go through to actually, I think, offer a car that is strong in DRS and is strong in the long corners."
McLaren is expected to bring upgrades to the Miami Grand Prix after small changes for the upcoming Japanese Grand Prix. And unlike last year, where it was only Norris' car that received substantial upgrades with Oscar Piastri receiving them a race later, both drivers will receive their upgrades at the same time.
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