As McLaren continues to close in on Red Bull, team boss Andrea Stella believes the Woking outfit still needs to work on its performance in high-speed corners.

"I think the race pace was very, very similar," said Stella, when asked about the performance of the McLaren compared to the Red Bull in Barcelona. "Very, very similar. The two cars are very, very close.

"In Canada the difference in qualifying was 20 milliseconds," he added, "in Spain it was again a few milliseconds and very similar in the race.

"That's a great achievement for McLaren," he continued. "Think how this interview would have been twelve months ago... now we talk about being on par with Red Bull, but we want to keep improving the car.

"The fact that we were faster at the end is because we had fresher tyres," he explained. "The fact that he was faster at the start is because we were behind Russell. Otherwise it would almost look like the great balance of performance that we had in qualifying, parity of performance. Almost like it transferred into the race.

"Normally you have some variations as a function of how you interact with the tyres," he continued. "But actually, I think it was very similar. On a track that is so demanding on tyres, so demanding on aerodynamics, I think that's really good news for the progress that we have made with the performance of the car."

However, the Italian admits that in the wake of updates introduced in Miami, while low-speed performance has improved the MCL38 is still lacking in high-speed performance.

"There are some sections of the car that don't necessarily fit the characteristics we have now," he said. "There are some others that will fit. If we look at the second sector we've been very competitive all weekend, and this is again witnessing the improvement we have made in the medium and low speed corners.

"But we have some work to do actually now in high speed," he admitted, "like we have discussed in previous events which were mainly low-speed dominated. We've been able to alter the personality of the car, now it's a car that works well in a speed range which 12 months ago was our weakness, but with this generation of cars you gain somewhere, you lose a little bit somewhere else.

"It's like we didn't improve as much as we did some other areas, and some other people did," he continued. "Certainly Red Bull, they are very good in high and very high speed.

"It's not like we made high speed worse," he insisted. "You just have to continue your development and make sure. But we do have to keep the trajectory up.

"It's not obvious, it requires a lot of work, it requires to keep evolving what we know about the car so that you can keep improving it. But the people at McLaren are very committed so I'm optimistic for the future."

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by kenji, 27/06/2024 1:39

"I'm always surprised that there is so much continued improvement brought to the cars over a season. I've can't recall anyone disclosing the actual changes that they have made to achieve this. The details are never disclosed, obviously but some details pertaining to past cars would be welcome. I always think that if they know what to do to improve specific performance why didn't they do this when they were
designing /preparing the car for the next season. This is in full knowledge that some areas that need to be improved can only be tested and validated during actual racing of course. "

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2. Posted by ARL, 26/06/2024 16:29

""We need to work on high-speed performance" - nothing new here.

I remember Graham Hill asking Jackie after one of his championship years what he attributed his winning to that year. Jackie replied, "Well last time I was faster in the corners, so this year I worked on being faster on the straights.""

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3. Posted by Hobgoblin, 26/06/2024 11:39

"Add to this that they are comparing themselves to the Red Bull with an exceptional driver, as opposed to any other driver, suggests that the car may actually be better than Red Bull.
Hats off to them!"

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4. Posted by Wokingchap, 26/06/2024 10:39

"I always believed in McL to get to this point and knew they would. Just a few milliseconds to go.....brilliant.
Daje Andrea siete tutti grandissimi."

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We need to work on high-speed performance, admits Stella

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