Why McLaren expect Imola to be even better for them compared to Miami
F1 News
McLaren introduced ten upgrades to Lando Norris' car in Miami, which led to winning for the first time in Formula 1. Whilst his team-mate, Oscar Piastri, only had 50% of the upgrades on his car, and still looked strong. Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast, race engineer Will Joseph shares the team's excitement for the upcoming weekend in Imola.
This weekend, Piastri is set to have the full set of upgrades on his car, and it seems the team is even more excited about this weekend than Miami, as they believe their car suits the Italian track better: "The upgrade favours some of the traits of Imola more than it does Miami," Joseph said. "Everyone's sort of very, very excited about what this can hold for the future. If you look back to what happened in Austria last year, we put the upgrade on there and we went well."
"You start to build a confidence, you build a further understanding of how to exploit that."
Why does Imola suit McLaren better?
Adding to his point that the track is likely to suit the British team better, Joseph said: "Miami has a lot of very, very low speed corners and the upgrade should behave bettr in the more medium to high speed corners. Therefore, when we get to Imola, which is in more favour of that kind of corner, hopefully we will see even further benefit."
The upgrades for McLaren do not stop there though, as Joseph revealed the team is already working on more: "We're working on the next round of upgrades, we're looking ahead and we're asking big things from the team."
“And now we're saying, well, look, can we do it again? And the win in Miami, I think, helps you justify those decisions. And people are in, they're excited, they're working hard, they're ambitious, they're pushing hard now to see the next step.”