While a raft of in-season upgrades delivered an impressive ramping up of McLaren’s form throughout 2023, the team started pondering towards the end of the year whether the changes had also introduced nasty characteristics that made the car less settled on the edge.
This was especially highlighted in the final races of the year when the car’s unpredictable nature prompted Lando Norris to make some high-profile mistakes in qualifying in Brazil and Abu Dhabi.
Having looked into the matter over the winter, McLaren has suggested that it did discover some traits within its concept that had triggered the issues.
And while it has been able to address some of these with developments for its new MCL38, team principal Andrea Stella has suggested that the squad will not be on top of everything until after the 2024 season has started.
Asked by Autosport about the outcome of the investigations, Stella said: “Yes, we definitely questioned ourselves – whether we had made the car quicker, but somehow slightly more difficult to be exploited when you go to the limit in qualifying.
“We have looked at, first of all, confirming whether this question was fair or if it was just kind of random episodes but not actually correlated from a technical point of view.
“We think that definitely there’s some areas that we could have looked into, and they affect the aerodynamics side.”
Source: Autosport