Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri secured second and third on the grid for Sunday’s race as they made good use of the newest upgrades.
However no person on the squad was getting too carried away with issues, as there was an acceptance that the high-speed nature of the Silverstone circuit, allied to cooler temperatures, helped play to the strengths of the MCL-60.
And whereas not wishing to be too downbeat after the encouraging end result, the group mentioned that there remained quite a lot of work to do but to get the automobile in a spot the place the squad might count on its sturdy type in all places.
“We have now clearly improved the automobile,” mentioned Norris, who missed out on pole place to Max Verstappen by simply two tenths of a second. “The general pace and efficiency has simply taken a good step ahead.
“However I assume if I used to be going to be unfavorable, there’s positively going to be some tracks that we’re going to battle extra at. Our weaknesses are nonetheless the identical, and fairly weak.
“So I believe we actually must try to sort out them if we would like to have the ability to be right here extra constantly.”
Whereas McLaren had made progress in addressing the aerodynamic effectivity issues of its launch spec automobile, it nonetheless struggles with automobile steadiness, route change in sluggish pace corners and a weak rear finish – which manifests itself with poor race tempo as tyres overheat.
Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL60
Photograph by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Photos
McLaren group boss Andrea Stella instructed that the sensible tempo at Silverstone, which adopted different promising performances in Spain and Austria, was helped by cooler temperatures and gentle tyres serving to masks points with the automobile.
“There’s positively a sample,” mentioned Stella. “Excessive pace corners, chilly circumstances, gentle tyres and, by the way in which, the identical compound: C3. So, we like these circumstances, our automobile likes it.
“The rear finish type of finds naturally some good grip, which we could also be lacking over steady laps, or when it is hotter. So circumstances come to our favour.
“However, on the identical time, I believe, on this end result, some contribution is coming from the enhancements we have made to the automobile. We measure these enhancements when it comes to downforce, and we see that in a number of the low pace, we’re decently aggressive now.
“However nonetheless, we now have a GPS overlays, and we are able to see that some automobiles are faster than us. This simply confirms what’s our goal when it comes to growth.”
Concerning McLaren’s race tempo, Stella added: “Whereas we now have improved the automobile when it comes to aerodynamic effectivity, we’ve not made but giant sufficient enhancements when it comes to components that may situation and may enhance the race tempo.
“So I’d nonetheless count on that there is automobiles round us that will probably be faster when it comes to race tempo, like Ferrari, and probably Mercedes as nicely. We’ll see additionally Aston Martin, how they do tomorrow. It’s going to rely additionally, to some extent, on the circumstances. Chilly circumstances ought to favour us for a similar causes, even within the race.”
Requested how a lot of McLaren’s most important issues have been solved by the improve, Norris mentioned: “It is like 70% not fastened, 30% fastened, simply by making the automobile faster, including load and having a greater efficiency.
“I believe 70% on the minute is extra that if we simply had extra load, extra of it is going to be lined. However it’s not the entire answer.
“I believe days like at present show that we’re not miles away on sure issues. It is just a few traits and dealing with, that I’d nonetheless say we have had as an inherent concern during the last 5 years, that we positively nonetheless battle with.”
