McLaren sees issue can't be fixed but 'only mitigated' for Norris
F1 News
Entering as the defending world constructors' champions, many consider McLaren to be favourites to win it all in the 2025 season. While the British team hope to improve as well especially at a circuit like the one Bahrain, they also aim to further improve the MCL39. However, there is still one issue that cannot be entirely fixed for several reasons according to Andrea Stella.
'Just a game of who mitigates it the most'
McLaren are putting on strong performance so far in Bahrain, especially in terms of race pace. Beforehand, after his first run, Lando Norris explained that they need to work on rear end sliding. "That was definitely the first thing he said, straight. Not only jumping off the car, but also during the stints," team principal Andrea Stella began talking about his driver's feedback to GPblog among others.
"When we were experiencing degradation, that was the main mechanism. Like I say, no surprise in Bahrain. But it would be incomplete to say that we only want to improve rear grip in terms of stability in entry and traction. We also want to improve the behaviour of the car in mid corner in terms of front end. And if anything, these three attributes is what we've been trying to improve, over this last couple of years and now is and we enter the third season," the Italian explained what his team are working on to be ready for similar tracks.
Can a complete solution be carried out in terms of this matter? Stella does not think so. "You sort of have an aspiration to remove them entirely, but in reality, it's just a game of who mitigates these limitations the most, which are inherent to a Formula 1 car and especially to a Formula 1 car in a track with this kind of layout," he added about the limiting characteristics.
Stella only saw drastic change once
"When you come to Bahrain, I will be very, very surprised that you don't have a rear end limitation and traction limitation. So somehow these limitations are inherent to the circuit at which we are operating. According to what we have seen so far and the data that we had in through car development, if anything, we think we have improved from this point-of-view," he shared.
The Italian only saw a drastic jump once, back when Ferrari introduced the exhaust effect over the course of the 2011-2012 seasons. The team principal does not expect that to happen again however. "Within what you can do inside the scope of the regulations, which is fixed, then you'll always going to suffer the same limitation. But, ultimately, you need to try and reduce those those limitations more and more."
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