Stella on why the McLaren upgrades worked

Lando Norris marched to Miami Grand Prix glory with a heavily upgraded McLaren and Andrea Stella revealing the team prioritised low-speed performance.

Norris arrived in Miami with a radically different MCL38 to what he raced with across the first five races as almost no aerodynamic surface on the car was untouched.

The upgrades included a new front wing, new front suspension, revised front brake duct and winglet, revised sidepod inlet, remodelled floor, new engine cover, updated cooling louvers, updated rear suspension and rear brake ducts, and finally a new offloaded beam wing design.

The early signs were strong with a McLaren 1-2 in SQ1.

Even with only half the upgrades, which saw a deficit of two tenths, Aussie Oscar Piastri also impressed to sit a strong second in the early stages.

Whilst luck was not on Piastri’s side, it was for Norris, who enjoyed what was effectively a free pit stop from a well-timed Safety Car, but still impressively drove away from the dominant Max Verstappen afterwards.

With the new upgrade, McLaren was able to achieve the right balance of cleaner downforce through the corners, which enabled the team to run less wing and enjoy less drag on the straights.

“We had good top speed here,” Stella told AUTOSPORT. 

“One of the reasons is that we on purpose decided to go for a relatively light rear wing.

“We could do that because we added downforce through the package.

“This means we need to be less demanding from a rear wing point of view, which is never too efficient.

“When you upgrade a car with floors and sidepods, it’s always more efficient than putting downforce on with a rear wing.”

This allowed McLaren to set-up the car chasing low-speed performance, which Stella suggested also played a big role in the success.

“The decent performance we had in low-speed is not necessarily because of the characteristic of the package, but also because of some conscious decisions as to how we set up the cars,” he said.

“If you look at qualifying, we lost quite a lot of time in the high-speed section, but this was kind of a deliberate set-up choice.”

Despite the impressive start, Stella said there is still lots of work to do in its pursuit of addressing more low-speed concerns.

“Not to the entirety that we would have wished,” Stella said. “There is still some more specific work and upgrades that we need to deliver to address low speed in particular.”

With Norris already victorious, Piastri will receive the full upgrade when Imola arrives on May 17-19.

Photo by Steven Tee / LAT Images

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The Miami F1 Grand Prix finally turned it on, and for the first time this year Max Verstappen was beaten on the track!

McLaren launched the attack, first with Oscar Piastri and then by Lando Norris who had a bit more luck with the Safety Cars. He pulled away for a maiden win