Stella on McLaren's upgrades: 'Hope they help Lando drive the car more naturally'

Andrea Stella has stated that the upgrades McLaren has brought to Bahrain are purposely for helping Lando Norris drive the MCL39 'more naturally'.

"The MCL39, the 2025 car is faster than last year's car. And this competitiveness came by changing many things," said the Italian to F1TV.

Both McLaren drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have complained regarding the difficulties of driving the Woking-based team's car, something Stella is hoping his team can address with the upgrades brought to the Sakhir International Circuit.

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"I think we have realized that there's a couple of things that, especially in relation to Lando's driving style, may be occasionally an advantage, but sometimes may create a bit of a disconnect between what Lando expects from the car and what the car is actually doing."

"We have approached that with, actually, what I could see was quite high-level engineering. And even here at this event, we have applied a few modifications, and we are very interested in seeing how they work."

Regarding the race weekend, Stella was keen on seeing what the upgrades did to the car, and disregarded Norris topping the timesheets convincingly during FP1.

"I think it's an interesting weekend not only from an overall competitiveness point of view but also in terms of fine-tuning this aspect of the car so that Lando can drive in the most natural way. I know it's early days because we've only seen FP1 and he was obviously top in that session but [Iit was] unrepresentative."