McLaren chief admits concerns over 2024 F1 car

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has admitted that the team may not have fixed all the issues with their 2023 car before the 2024 season kicks off.

Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri languished near the bottom of the standings at the start of last season, but a mid-season upgrade launched them into relevance, putting them in the fight for podium positions with Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin.

However, the MCL60 was noticeably at the mercy of certain track layouts, with Piastri and Norris occasionally struggling for pace in qualifying and races later in the year.

READ MORE: McLaren F1 car launch 2024: When, and how to watch live

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.”

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.”

READ MORE: F1 2024 car launches: Dates, times and how to watch live

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