Team principal Andrea Stella wants McLaren to remain aggressive when it comes to its car development for the final six rounds of the season, despite its recent strong showings.
McLaren is on a run of three wins in the past four races, with two of those being dominant outings for Lando Norris in Zandvoort and Singapore. With many teams struggling to consistently upgrade their cars, Stella admits that having such an advantage over the field at the last race left him wary of making changes that could impact the McLaren’s balance, but the Italian believes his team can’t afford to be cautious.
“In fairness, that was one of my thoughts after the race [in Singapore],” Stella said. “Because we do have some stuff in the pipeline and obviously when you have this kind of performance on track you always may approach things from a cautious point of view in terms of development.
“At the same time, we need to trust the process, we need to trust the way we’ve been working so far. I’ve said already that we have taken our time to make sure that once we deliver trackside we have done the due diligence.
“I don’t think this will change our plans. In Formula 1 I’m not sure you can back off too much because backing off means that the others may catch up and we don’t know what the plans of the others are.
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“In Red Bull we see that on a track in which they thought they would have not been very competitive, ultimately they were potentially second best. I think we haven’t seen [Ferrari’s potential] but even Ferrari, in P1 and P2, they seemed to be as fast as us and the final stint of [Charles] Leclerc was very competitive.
“The race may flatter us a little bit. The situation from a competitiveness point of view, I would say we need to keep being aggressive in terms of development.”
Norris’ victory in Singapore saw him reduce Max Verstappen’s advantage by seven points as the championship leader finished second, but Stella says he takes more confidence based on the team’s pace advantage rather than the actual point-scoring outcome.
“Look, from a numerical point of view, it’s a little frustrating because I think we could have gone away from Singapore having gained more points on Max,” he said.
“I think Ferrari could have finished ahead of Max, I think even Oscar [Piastri], polishing a little bit the qualifying laps, he could have finished ahead of Max. The positives that come from the pace of the car definitely overcome this kind of frustration I think when you have this sort of pace. We are heading on to the next six events, three of which are sprint events.
“So I think it’s definitely not in our hands because it’s still in Max’s hands. Likewise, the constructors’ [title], that’s more in our hands, in fairness, but I think we go away potentially encouraged and even more optimistic that the drivers’ championship is possible because of the performance of the car.”