McLaren hopes to be competitive in Austria
Andrea Stella, team principal of McLaren, hopes to see his team perform well at the Red Bull Ring, as this Austrian event marks the first step in the arrival of improvements.
In great difficulty since the beginning of the season, McLaren hopes to find performance in Austria with the arrival of a first wave of improvements on the MCL60. The recent Grand Prix have given hope to the Woking team, especially in qualifying: Lando Norris, 2nd on the grid in Spain and 7th in Canada, accompanied by Oscar Piastri, in 8th place. However, it has been impossible for McLaren to confirm during the race. As a result, they are 6th in the constructors’ championship with 17 points, already 27 points behind Alpine. Approaching the summer break, Andrea Stella’s team will accompany their race weekends with evolutions on the car in order to give McLaren a new lease of life. The first step in this project is the Austrian Grand Prix!
Andrea Stella confident
Andre Stella wants to be confident about the circuit. « Austria is a circuit on which we have achieved good results in the past, I think there are six or seven corners, including four high-speed ones, where we should be competitive », he declared. On this point, it’s hard to contradict the Italian Team Principal. A double points finish in 2022, a 3rd place for Lando Norris in 2021 and 2020: it’s true, this layout of the Red Bull Ring suits McLaren quite well and especially Norris in recent years.
Yes, it’s a clear ray of hope for Stella and her team. But this 2023 season doesn’t really resemble the previous ones. Red Bull is dominating the field, with Aston Martin, Mercedes, and Ferrari following behind. This leaves very little room for other teams. Especially with Alpine gaining more and more performance, McLaren will have to find a way to make their mark. To score points in Austria, it will take more than just being confident about the circuit. It will require performance. Luckily, McLaren is coming with improvements.
The Red Bull Ring: the first step of a major project
To gain performance, the only solution is to improve the car. For this, Andrea Stella indicates that this weekend in Austria will allow McLaren to evolve its car: « Austria is, as I have been saying for some time now, our first step to bring improvements. I believe that this can be more important than track suitability: the characteristics of our car. »
However, this weekend is a sprint weekend! This means that there will only be one free practice session on Friday before qualifying. It’s not much time to prepare for the sprint day on Saturday and the Grand Prix on Sunday. But that should be enough for McLaren. We won’t focus on the track characteristics, but on the car itself. Even though we only have one practice session, we will be able to validate and be in a more competitive situation, Stella said.
An evolution over several races
This new package in Austria for McLaren is the first in a series that will span across three Grand Prix races. The evolution should happen in terms of the lap times of the McLaren cars, as Andrea Stella explains: “Over the three races in which we introduce it, there should be a few tenths of a second that should be noticeable in terms of lap time.” Despite this seemingly small improvement, the McLaren Team Principal is relying on this package to succeed.
At McLaren, ambitions are high. It’s normal for such a prestigious team like the one in Woking. However, in 2022, the British team missed the regulation change and is now finding itself in the midfield. In 2023, with Andrea Stella as the new team principal, McLaren hopes to bounce back, just like Aston Martin, for example.
In the end, for us, it is an important step that may allow us to reverse the course of the season, not only through what we bring to Austria, but also through what will follow in the upcoming races, Stella concluded.
