McLaren Formula 1 team boss Andrea Stella says the team has «taken action» after last year’s disappointing performance at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which has been one of its worst circuits in recent years.
McLaren finished sixth and seventh on the Las Vegas Strip street circuit last season, with Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri ending up 43 and 51 seconds behind Mercedes’ winner George Russell, respectively, after having qualified a massive seven tenths adrift. They were also well beaten by both Ferrari cars as well as Max Verstappen.
At the time, its poor form on the low-downforce street circuit was no major surprise, although McLaren didn’t just suffer from a lack of aerodynamic efficiency with its low-drag rear wing, but also struggled to get the tyres to work properly in the cold desert conditions.
«Vegas last year was one of the most difficult races,» team boss Stella said. «We had difficulties with the behaviour of the tyres in qualifying, because we were not fast, and behaviour of the tyres in the race because we had a lot of graining.
«We also had some aerodynamic issues when we tried to offload the rear wing, we saw that we were losing too much efficiency and we also had a bit of issues with the set-up of the car in a way trying to compensate for this graining and some of the understeer.»
Stella said the papaya squad took action after last year’s lack of competitiveness but whether that is enough remains to be seen. The lack of long, fast corners means the McLaren MCL39 can’t utilise one of its biggest strengths and because of the chilly weather the team also won’t benefit as much from its innovative cooling system on the car compared to hot races.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Pauline Ballet / LAT Images via Getty Images
While Mercedes’ form has been hard to read, there is no reason to suggest it won’t be in the mix again in Vegas, while Ferrari is also expecting to be more competitive.
«The review from Vegas last year gave us a lot of information to try and find a way to improve,» Stella explained. «I would say that from a tyre point of view, from an aerodynamic efficiency point of view and from a car set-up point of view, we know in which direction we should change compared to last year.
«Will it be enough to be competitive now? We will only see it in Vegas, but definitely we took actions in response to what we saw last year because, certainly the performance wasn’t satisfactory enough.»
Championship leader Norris wasn’t overly optimistic about his chances to score three consecutive wins for the first time in his career.
«I think it was our worst race last year,» he said. «We know Mercedes were incredibly strong there last year, as well as Red Bull and Ferrari. I think we were the bottom of those four.
«We’ll wait and see. Obviously, we’ve improved a lot of things this year, so I’m not going to be too negative about it.»
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