McLaren boss warns F1 rivals after talking up Australian GP upgrades

It is only two races into the new F1 season, and already teams are discussing upgrades - with McLaren looking like they have have a headstart on their rivals.

Red Bull looms imperiously over the rest of the field, with a double one-two result in the inaugural rounds and once more they look the team to beat having also totally dominated in 2022 and 2023.

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Max Verstappen finished 18.639 seconds above the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc in Saudi Arabia, continuing his dominant display we saw at the season opening Bahrain GP the previous weekend.

McLaren were the next best team after Ferrari, but felt the limitations of their car in some areas during the race weekend.

Andrea Stella discusses limitations of McLaren car

Now team principal Andrea Stella has discussed the strengths and limitations of the car after the Saudi Arabian GP, and predicted more to come from the papaya outfit.

“The points of strength, you will have seen, that anybody behind a McLaren in Sector 1 would lose ground,” he said according to MotorsportWeek. “So, when you have these fast-flowing corners, in which it’s enough to do the first steer input, the car responds very well.

“When instead the corners are long, like in the last corner, and you need to really hold the steer for a long time, the car gives up a little bit and we lose a lot of time, which is where, like Ferrari, they are very strong, and that’s why Leclerc was so competitive in the last sector, just that corner.”

“And the other limitation was, somehow still we would like to have more top speed."

“So, I think these two features are very well exposed, at this track, where you have the long straights, and a couple of very long corners, where the limitation gets visible.

“Otherwise, it’s a battle of development. And the development may be the very visible developments where you come with an aerodynamic upgrade.

“Or there’s some other things that you can deliver from a mechanical or even aerodynamic point of view. And at the moment in the pipeline, we have both.

“We have some minor things that will come for Australia and hopefully for Japan, but they will be a few milliseconds.

“And then hopefully within the first third of the season, we will have a major upgrade.”

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