McLaren will have further updates at the Hungarian Grand Prix that should give it a better read on how much of an overall gain it has made in terms of race pace.
With new parts, Lando Norris finished fourth in Austria on a track well-suited to the McLaren, and the team also felt the high-speed corners and low temperatures of Silverstone played a key role in its stunning pace that saw Norris qualify and finish second and Oscar Piastri end up fourth. Piastri was still lacking some of the updates at the last race but team principal Andrea Stella says both drivers will have an equally developed car in Budapest.
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“For Hungary we have some further upgrades that will help more from the point of view of trying to improve the race pace,” Stella said. “This will be available to both drivers — we don’t expect that the specification of the car will not be aligned between Oscar and Lando.
“Like any other team, we will carry on delivering some upgrades to the following races, and this is also thanks to the fact that once we started redesigning the car we kind of unlocked performance. In new iterations we keep seeing the aerodynamic development being quite effective. So as soon as you see a project is mature enough to deliver, you press the go button.”
Mercedes’ George Russell believes McLaren can be fighting to be the second-fastest team to Red Bull at all venues but Stella says Hungary will provide a much clearer picture of how big the team’s step forward has been.
“When it comes to whether this improvement will manifest itself in the future, even if George says that the tracks are different, actually there are significant elements of commonality between Austria and Silverstone; especially there is a high density of corners in which we know our car performs well. Conditions like (last Sunday), they do help because they don’t overheat the tires, which is also something on which we have some work to do. I hope George is right, by the way!
“In a way we look forward to Hungary to check more comprehensively where we really are. There is not as much high speed — if anything it is a low- and medium-speed dominated track and also you can have hot conditions, which is another testing territory for us. We will see.”