McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has conceded it cannot improve its Formula 1 car handling characteristics ‘without fundamental changes’ that will not be possible until 2027.
While every F1 driver has needed to adapt to the new generation of cars and engines in order to extract the maximum performance, often applying unnatural or unusual techniques never used in their entire careers, McLaren has also been battling a car handling issue in greater depth all season.
As Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have attempted to adapt their driving styles to suit the V6 turbo hybrids with the increased electrical power elements from this year, the added complication of car handling has hamstrung the team’s overall progress relative to its frontrunning rivals.
A problem that has seemingly struck Piastri harder than his team-mate due to their different natural driving styles, it is a matter the team cannot fully solve until it can make major technical changes with an all-new car in 2027.
Stella explained: “I don't expect that what's coming to the car will improve this characteristic. I think we need something more fundamental than simply adding some downforce to the car like it's happening in the coming races.
“Without fundamentally changing some further aspect which we are addressing longer term and at the earliest I would say with the MCL41 for 2027.”
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Simon Galloway / LAT Images via Getty Images
After the Singapore Grand Prix Norris went into detail on the subject, explaining he needs to “force” his McLaren F1 car into what he wants it to do rather than finding a balance he is comfortable with.
“It's [the car] just on a knife edge on every single corner,” Norris said. “You've just got to drive it within an exact percent, and you have to force the car in every single way. You can't let the car do any work. You can't just let the front do the work, or the rear do the work. You have to force the front; you've got to force the rear.
“You've got to drive it in a way that takes so much concentration and so much ability. It's just full-on and mentally draining because of how hard you have to work behind the wheels.
“It's just too difficult and it makes it impossible to put laps together in qualifying, which just shows how good of a job we were able to do when we were getting on pole and things like that and how rewarding that felt.
“We haven't been quick enough now, it's just too difficult and you can't do anything magical because you're simply not quick enough. You have to force the car, and you can't let the car do any work because it doesn't do it on its own. And that's not what you want from a car at all.”
This driving “intensity” is a feature Stella believes has been a part of McLaren’s F1 car all season which Norris and Piastri have needed to adapt to and something the Australian’s natural smoother and gentler inputs found harder to get to grips with.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
“The fact that the car needs quite a lot of effort to deliver lap time, and it requires a level of intensity in the driving input, which is much superior to last year, this is something that took some time for the drivers to understand,” he explained.
“And it's also one of the reasons why Oscar, at some stage, he almost lost like some of the competitiveness compared to Lando. And we were here discussing, what is happening with Oscar? And I've always said that that was a technical matter. Oscar just needed to understand how to force the car to do some things and sort of abandon the fact that driving fast will not necessarily mean driving clean if that makes sense.
“Which was the signature of Oscar when we have seen him fast in the past. He was like... He was clean, he was really good [with the] data to see he was very repeatable and he was fast. With this car, all these things together they don't seem to happen very often so it's a lot of work for the drivers.”
Read Also:
Why McLaren considers Norris-Piastri Singapore clash so “serious”
McLaren junior Van Langendonck secures British F4 title