No fear that upgraded MCL38 F1 car will suffer at high-speed Barcelona

The Woking-based squad’s recent cars have typically excelled in high-speed corners, but there has been a shift in the characteristics of its 2024 challenger off the back of upgrades that arrived at Miami.

It found that, while performance was improved across the range, the biggest step came in low-speed turns – for reasons that it was not initially sure about.

However, with teams having found that one of the biggest challenges is in delivering a car that is good at both low and high-speed corners, there has been some uncertainty about whether or not McLaren’s gains in one area would come at the expense of its form in the other.

But ahead of what will be an intriguing Spanish Grand Prix weekend, which is more in the medium and high-speed range than recent circuits, McLaren sees no cause for alarm.

“I think we can still be confident,” he said. “I wouldn’t say we’re weak in high speed, it’s just that others have probably caught up a little bit.

“I’m pretty confident we’ll be somewhere towards the front as well. Red Bull will probably be a bit stronger than they have been, but we’ll be in the fight.”

Secret answers

While aware that its low-speed performance had improved since Miami, McLaren was initially unsure about why the step forward had been greater than anticipated.

Team boss Andrea Stella now says the team does understand the dynamics at play but has refused to elaborate on the reasons why in case it hands an advantage to the opposition.

“We are starting to understand that some of the things we were working on unlocked some of the important behaviours of the car, which become relevant for low-speed corners,” he said.

“But that is information that we don’t necessarily want to share because we don’t want competitors to look into that.

“I think for us internally, it’s important that some of the work we have done over the previous month seems to kind…