McLaren has developed its MCL60 at a healthy rate this season, with great success, but team boss Andrea Stella explains why it's always ill advised for a team to rush its upgrades.
After acknowledging its car's lack of development at the start of its 2023 campaign, McLaren approached its problem head-on by devising an important incremental programme that hit the track in Austria at the end of June and proved transformative.
Subsequent upgrades implemented over the summer delivered more performance, allowing team papaya to claim a string of podiums and boost its points tally in F1's Constructors' standings.
In Japan, the team's strong double podium finish behind Red Bull's Max Verstappen reduced its gap to fourth-place team Aston in the championship to 49 points.
There's perhaps an argument to be made that the faster developments can be brought to the track, the quicker a team's progress. But Stella explains why process trumps pace when it comes to a team's approach to development.
"I’m focused on the process," said the McLaren team principal. "And you can have targets, you can say ‘these are my two, three milestones from a results point of view’.
"But in reality, you don't work against that. You work just at the fastest, reasonable pace that can be sustained in development.
"I mean, that's the definition, what we do is the fastest reasonable pace that can be sustained in development. Then we see where we end up."
Stella says that any attempt to rush a development may result in stagnation, or worse, regression.
"If you go faster, you may start jumping the gun, shortcutting, finding yourself bringing things trackside and they don't work because you haven't been methodical enough," he said.
"So that's how we work.
"Looking at the season, if we really want to check against this best expectation, I think we are slightly ahead of where we would have expected to be even in the most optimistic prediction.
"This is credit and testament of the good work that has happened from a technical point of view, operational point of view and racing point of view at McLaren."
Looking ahead at next weekend's Qatar Grand Prix, Stella foresees a challenging weekend ahead for all teams given that the event, which wasn't on the sport's calendar last year, will see their new-generation ground-effect cars race for the very first time at Lusail.
"The Qatar race is fairly new to F1, as we have only visited the Lusail International Circuit once before back in 2021," he said;
"However, this is the first time we will be bringing the new generation of cars here, so everyone will be trying to make the most of the practice sessions, and the Sprint format only adds to that challenge.
"As always, we aim to come away with as many points as possible as we look to maximise our performance in the Constructors’ Championship."
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