McLaren surprised by its results in China, will reveal its first evolution in Miami

Did McLaren have their best weekend of the 2024 season after Lando Norris’ first place in Sprint qualifying and second place at the Chinese GP? In any case, this is the opinion of the team director, Andrea Stella. Surprised by the performance of the car, the Italian was open about the fact that the results were above the initial expectations on the microphone. Sky Sports.

“(Surprised by the results?) Us! In all honesty we came here thinking it was a damage control weekend, but it was actually our best result yet. Competitive pole position for the Sprint and I think second place in the Sprint would have been achieved without a problem on the first corner of the Competition in qualifying and again in the same race. It is clear that we need to adjust something in our approach, but Formula 1 often surprises you because it is sensitive to many parameters.”

“Good day, good points and another podium.”

Hear from Lando, Oscar and Andrea after #ChineseGP. 🇨🇳 🏆

– McLaren (@McLarenF1) April 21, 2024

The first evolution to get closer to the summit?

The British team boss also reveals his expectations for the Miami GP (from May 3 to 5). The MCL38 will undergo an evolution, the first season of 2024. With this, the trained engineer hopes that the damage to the tire will be reduced compared to that which they suffered in Shanghai. In addition to this improvement, the car should benefit from the layout of the Florida circuit, more in line with its characteristics than that of the last Grand Prix.

“For Miami we will finally have the first set of improvements to our car like we had before, so the track is a little bit smaller at the back;

But Stella doesn’t make plans on the comet. The single-seater still has a few shortcomings and development will take a long time to satisfy the team at the Woking factory. It must be said that the orange team is still far from returning to Red Bull, even if Norris was able to set an amazing pace against Checo Perez (3rd) during the last GP. But it is still not enough to think of being able to compete with Red Bull or even Ferrari for a long time, since the main goal of the team is to consolidate the third position of the manufacturer.

“Considering the level of improvement that we would need to do to be close to some of our competitors, I would say that we need more than a series of improvements in terms of supporting the behavior of the tire. But first of all, it is a kind of constant development. itself is good enough when it comes to keeping the tires in the right driving window I think the track (Shanghai) has been stable with the fact that the main obstacle was the rear loading of the car surprise because this track in terms of asphalt, despite its amazing surface, is equal to Bahrain (Bahrain GP. ) and Suzuka (Japan GP) We know that we are relegated to the back when some cars are doing better than us, for example, Ferrari and Red Bull.”

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