McLaren team principal highlights trend that accentuated car's weakness in first few races

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella reckons there's a trend emerging after gauging the car's weaknesses and strengths after five races. McLaren's Miami weekend left a lot of fans and pundits puzzled, as the team plummeted down the order.

Neither Oscar Piastri nor Lando Norris were able to make any headway and finished outside the points-scoring positions. What made things even more complicated was that Norris showed an impressive turn of pace on Friday of the weekend. However, while every other team turned up the wick on Saturday, McLaren could not keep up.

Talking about the team's underwhelming weekend, McLaren's Andrea Stella said that there's an emerging trend where the grippier the track, the better the car performs. He told Motorsport:

"There's a trend emerging. This trend is that when the grip is high, our car gains competitiveness. We think this trend is related to the fact that the lower the grip, the more you have to spend time off brakes, off throttle. This is a situation in which our car doesn't work very well.

He added:

"(When) temperatures were low - track temperature, ambient temperature - the car was much happier. The drivers could attack. If you attack the braking, then you minimise this phase in mid-corner, in which you roll out the brakes, out of the throttle. Immediately, we gain competitiveness."

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McLaren had its share of struggles in Baku too

Stella added that the team had its fair share of struggles in Baku as well where even though the team scored points, it was not as comfortable as it looked from the outside. Talking about Baku, he said:

"If we look at Baku, for instance, with the new Tarmac this year, the grip was high, and in all the sections where you can brake hard, short corners like Turns 1 and 2, we were competitive. Very short time off throttle, off brakes. But if you see the castle section where you have to roll, we were not very competitive even in Baku. So, this is a trend"

The British team will hope for a return to form in Imola. They had their sole podium of the 2022 season at the same track with Lando Norris. So they will hope that the car characteristics help them secure a better result this weekend.