McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said the performance of his team’s MCL38 machine is now “very, very close” to Red Bull’s formerly indomitable RB20 after the Spanish Grand Prix. Upgrades for McLaren at the Miami Grand Prix saw an immediate improvement in form, with Lando Norris taking a breakthrough maiden win at that race – while since then , McLaren has finished in P2 at every Grand Prix. Most recently in Spain, Norris claimed the second pole position of his career, before finishing within three seconds of Max Verstappen, and blamed himself for losing the race he should have “ should have won”.
Looking at the big picture, however, Stella is encouraged by the impressive performance his team is showing at present – especially compared to their difficult start to 2023. “I think the two cars are very, very close,” Stella said when asked how McLaren could match Red Bull. “I think in Canada the difference in qualifying was 20 milliseconds, here it was a few milliseconds and very similar in the race. It’s a great achievement for McLaren, if we think about what this interview would have been like 12 months ago, so now we’re talking about being on par with Red Bull – but we want to keep improving. improve the car.
“We have to maintain the upward trajectory,” Stella added. “It’s not obvious, it requires a lot of work, it requires continuing to develop what we know about the car so you can continue to improve it, but the people at McLaren are very dedicated and I’m lost. about the future.”
Verstappen has taken pole position in the first seven races of 2024, but has not taken a pole position since the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. And after losing to Norris in qualifying in Spain before only narrowly beating his friend and rival in the race, Verstappen was generous in his praise of what McLaren are now achieving on track.
“I always knew it would be very tight,” Verstappen said after the Barcelona race. “And McLaren is doing very, very well. They have brought a lot of good updates to their car, and it really seems to work. And on our end, we brought a lot to the car, but probably not as much lap time as what other people brought to their car. “So now we have to try to search a little bit more, try to get that little leap again. Because I think obviously today, we just lacked a little bit of that outright speed, but also when we had to push hard, we couldn’t look after the tires like Lando, for example. “So these things are pretty important on most tracks where you have a little bit of [degradation]. So, yes, we need to try and improve that.” Despite McLaren’s strong recent form, Ferrari still leads them in P2 in the constructors’ championship, while leaders Red Bull are 93 points ahead of the Woking team.
