"We are heavily looking into updating all our production facilities"- McLaren planning 'big upgrades' for future F1 seasons

McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has hinted at some major upgrades lined up in his team's near future after a relatively mediocre 2022 F1 season so far under the new regulations.

The Woking-based team were expecting to be the best of the rest behind the top three but have found themselves being hotly challenged by Alpine for the fourth spot in the standings. After 13 rounds of racing this season, McLaren are four points behind Alpine in P5 while Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes are miles ahead.

This has not surprised Andreas Seidl, who expected established teams with existing infrastructure to have their affairs in order even before the budget cap was introduced by the sport to curb overspending. Speaking in an interview with RacingNews365, the German engineer said:

“I didn’t expect a big change in the pecking order going into this new era of Formula 1. Why? Because the teams that are simply better teams right now, with their established organisations – with their established infrastructure, with their established tools they are using – there is no reason why they should not do a better job compared to us [in] preparing this new era. And that’s what we are seeing.”

Seidl went on to add:

“We should also not forget that all the teams that we were outspending in the past – because we were the fourth biggest team – suddenly are in the middle of the fight as well. Some of these teams, like Alpine, like Alfa Romeo, they have state-of-the-art infrastructure in place already. That’s why we have to accept that these guys can do as good as us, maybe even ahead of us at the moment, which is not a situation we are happy with, but that’s the reality we are in.”

---

What infrastructural upgrades does McLaren have in the pipelines?

McLaren boss Andreas Seidl has confirmed that the team already has a plan in place to address any infrastructural deficiencies they might have.

Speaking in the aforementioned interview with RacingNews365, Seidl said:

“We plan to have the wind tunnel ready [by the] middle of next year, which means part of the ’24 car development will benefit from the new wind tunnel already. The first full car that [will be] developed in the tunnel is the ’25 car. On the driving simulator side, we are planning to complete a new one [at the] end of this year/beginning of next year, where we then hopefully see some benefits already next year, or [at the] latest in ’24.”

Seidl also touched on their CFD (computational fluid dynamics) development, adding:

“On CFD , we made big upgrades as well. We are heavily looking into updating all our production facilities as well, which needs to happen in parallel to [us] becoming better as a team.”

McLaren have taken a long-term approach to this and have tapered their expectations for the current season to focus on 2024 and beyond. Lando Norris, the only driver on the team with a long-term contract, has also echoed his approval of this approach.