Stella: “We didn’t have time to work on low-drag rear fins.”

At Spa-Francorchamps, the MCL60s of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri used high-downforce rear wings, which notably propelled the young Australian to second place in the Sprint race.

However, this [race] took place on a wet track, with the high downforce package suiting the conditions. But on Sunday, in dry conditions, the McLarens appeared to be more vulnerable.

The team boss, Andrea Stella, acknowledges that his men expected « a certain vulnerability ». « But when we found ourselves in the midst of other cars, the negative spiral began to manifest itself quite quickly. We must admit very frankly that while this configuration gave us an advantage in the sprint, it posed a significant problem during the race. »

Oscar Piastri was forced to retire in the first lap after a contact with Carlos Sainz, and Lando Norris suffered several overtakes in the early laps due to his low top speed, which penalized him in sectors 1 and 3.

« “With hindsight, we could have tried to find another solution to reduce the car’s drag,” said Stella to the media. He explains that McLaren had focused on the massive improvements made to the car during the Austrian and British Grand Prix, which completely transformed the car.”

« The efficiency of the low-drag car is less important than other priorities »

« It is possible that we would not have been able to achieve the results of the sprint race if we had done things differently. It is obvious that for a dry race, you want to run with less drag. The correlation is that, because we were busy working on other things, we did not have the time to work on low-drag rear wings. »

« It’s not like we necessarily want to target this configuration. Improving the efficiency of the low-drag car is on the to-do list, but it’s less important than other priorities we have been working on in the past few months. »,

McLaren also plans to use the summer break to make a final « conceptual update » to its current model.