McLaren can outdevelop rivals with “alive” MCL60 F1 car

Stella’s sentiments were shared by Lando Norris, who highlighted the progress made by Aston Martin over the winter as something that McLaren could aspire to match within this season.

McLaren failed to get a car into Q3 for the first race of the season in Bahrain, with Norris starting 11th and arguably flattered by poor sessions for others, while his rookie team-mate Oscar Piastri qualified 18th.

The team has made it clear since the launch of the new car that it is betting heavily on an update package scheduled for the fourth race in Baku, but nevertheless the struggles through Bahrain testing and the race weekend have been painful for the team.

“When we say fixable or unfixable, we need to be clear about what we are talking about,” said Stella when asked if the problems could be addressed with the resources the team currently has at its disposal.

“The main limitation that we have at the moment is aerodynamic downforce. Obviously we can improve the rate of development in the car by having better infrastructure, by having more workforce and this is why we are having the investments that are ongoing now at McLaren.

“However, I think that for the level of talent and availability we have at McLaren already, we can recover and we can outdevelop other teams because what we see in development right now is a very alive car in terms of development.

“There are some areas of the car that seem to be able to generate good downforce, like I’ve said already, they were not ready in time to be part of the launch spec. 

“But this car will evolve pretty much race-by-race, with some major upgrades that will come, the first one around race four.”

Stella was reminded of historical examples of the team making a poor car competitive over a season, although both occurred in an era without a cost cap or tight aero testing restrictions.

“There are certainly cases in the past in which this has happened and obviously many things have changed,” agreed Stella, who was with rival Ferrari at the time.

“For us, that is the ambition, we want to be able to do what McLaren was able to do in 2009, I remember they recovered a lot of performance, and in 2012 as well.

“If I look at the potential in development, I think we have the potential to outdevelop competitors, so hopefully we can add 2023 to this list.”