Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri secured second and third on the grid for Sunday’s race as they made good use of the latest upgrades.
But nobody at the squad was getting too carried away with things, as there was an acceptance that the high-speed nature of the Silverstone circuit, allied to cooler temperatures, helped play to the strengths of the MCL60.
And while not wishing to be too downbeat after the encouraging result, the team said that there remained a lot of work to do to get the car in a place where the squad could expect its strong form everywhere.
“We have obviously improved the car,” said Norris, who missed out on pole position to Max Verstappen by just two tenths of a second. “The overall speed and performance has just taken a decent step forward.
“But I guess if I was going to be negative, there's definitely going to be some tracks that we are going to struggle more at. Our weaknesses are still the same, and quite weak.
“So I think we really need to try and tackle them if we want to be able to be here more consistently.”
While McLaren had made progress in addressing the aerodynamic efficiency problems of its launch spec car, it still struggles with car balance, direction change in slow speed corners and a weak rear end – which manifests itself with poor race pace as tyres overheat.
Source: Autosport