“It will be decently noticeable”: McLaren boss says team have radically redesigned MCL60

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella mentioned that the heavily upgraded MCL60 debuting at the Austrian Grand Prix will be noticeably different from the current car.

The iconic British team are currently struggling in the 2023 season and have only scored 17 points from the eight completed races thus far. Although the MCL60 does look competitive in the one-lap qualifying, it drops off heavily during races, despite upgrades.

To combat their early season slump, McLaren are planning to introduce more major upgrades to the car in Austria to get more competitive. As per Motorsportweek, Stella said:

“Well, relatively soon, at the start of the season, we realized that the car needed a fundamental redesign so this redesign is actually interesting, I would say, pretty much every single aerodynamic part, that’s why the upgrades will be spread over the course of a few races.

He added:

"It will be decently noticeable. We had to redesign even some parts under the bodywork. That’s also why it took some time to be in condition to deliver these upgrades. So I would say pretty much the entire car.”

McLaren team boss speaks on the upgrade package in Austria

Andrea Stella mentioned that Mclaren have not tested the new upgrade package on the simulator, but the correlation has been positive.

The McLaren team boss said:

“Yep, as for the upgrades, we haven’t tested them in the simulator yet, but they just pretty much deliver more downforce with similar characteristics. So actually, the key point is whether they will correlate trackside. But I think the correlation so far has been good."

Stella added:

“I think with this generation of cars in general, correlation with development tools is good. So we expect a few tenths of a second of lap time improvement. And yeah, we will see. I'm banking on this package, but across the pretty much three races in which we will introduce it, these should be a few tenths of a second - it will be noticeable from a lap time point of view.”

McLaren really needs the upcoming upgrade package to work if they want to get their season back on track and start competing in the points more regularly. If not, they will find themselves moving further away from the midfield battles and find themselves in the midst of a fight for lower positions in the constructor's championship with teams such as Alfa Romeo, Haas, and Williams.