McLaren team boss Andrea Stella says a three-step upgrade plan for its MCL60 will see a sort of B-spec version of its 2023 design hit the track by mid-summer.
From the outset, Stella hasn't been happy with the status of team papaya's MCL-60, the Italian suggesting at the team's presentation back in February that the car's development should have been further along than where it was.
The first two races of the season have come and gone without McLaren earning any points, shortfall due to a blend of underperformance and lack of reliability.
Meanwhile, back at its base in Woking, the team's engineering department has undergone a significant shake-up, with technical director James Key leaving the outfit and a new structure being put in place that will include former Ferrari engineer David Sanchez.
©McLaren
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix, Stella shed light on McLaren's comprehensive development programme that will hopefully pull the team up the grid and back among F1's top four by the end of the season.
"The improvement of car performance should start in Baku," Stella explained.
"The improvement in Baku should affect an area of the car that I think has been clear from the presentation of the car, we weren’t entirely happy with in terms of development. It’s just the first step.
"We would expect definitely another major upgrade, which will address more areas of the car. It will be much more apparent, it’s what somebody may call kind of a B-spec car.
"And then we expect to have a further round of upgrades in the second part of the season after the shutdown.
"So we have three main steps: Baku, later on – I don’t want to commit to any date, but before shutdown – and then after shutdown.
"We hope that each of them will be able to provide a few tenths of a second, so that we put ourselves in a more realistic position to meet our ambition to become a top four car towards the end of the season."
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella
Stella believes that McLaren's recent overhaul of its engineering and design departments will speed up the rate of development of the team's MCL60.
"It will affect the delivery of performance because it will accelerate the development rate, and I think that we will see the impact already," said the Italian.
"Not in Baku, because what comes in Baku was released in design about two months ago, but it will definitely impact the next [few races]."
McLaren will function in the future with a three-pronged F1 Technical Executive Team comprised of Peter Prodromou handling Aerodynamics, Sanchez assigned to overseeing (from January 1, 2024) Car Concept and Performance and Neil Houdey supervising Engineering and Design.
McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown
McLaren Racing boss Zak Brown explained the underlying reasons for the team's technical shake up.
"In the second half of the year we were looking at how development was going," said Brown.
"Obviously we started the year with some challenges in testing with the brake ducts, the car was okay, then we had driver-related issues to work through which took the attention if you like and the headlines.
"Meanwhile underneath the surface I wasn’t happy with the pace of the development of the racing car," added the American.
"We had a Team Principal change towards the end of the year which allowed me the opportunity to be more aggressive in working with Andrea to give him the mandate of ‘take a look at the team’, that’s exactly what he did, and obviously he having been there he wasn’t starting from ground zero if you like.
"Ultimately he came up with a model that makes total sense to us and those internally, and went about starting to put those plans in place and so when we made the announcement it’d been in the works for some time and was coincidental to our poor start to the season."
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