Is it time to dig out from the middle of the field and start chasing the top quartet? With an overall sixth place and seventeen points from eight races, a team like McLaren cannot be satisfied. The Woking stable brought the first big upgrade package to Austria and launched an offensive against the top four teams.
Many of you will surely remember the introduction of the MCL60 single-seater. The team there, through the mouth of its boss Zak Brown, bluntly admitted that this is not “it” car, but due to delayed development plans, they will only field a “real” single-seater in Baku.
And so it happened, and McLaren brought a new floor to the city on the shores of the Caspian Sea. No miracle happened, but that doesn’t matter, because the fruits of real development are only now coming to the scene. The MCL60 gets a new look in Austria, but only the one in the hands of Lando Norris. His teammate Oscar Piastri will only get an improved car later.
“Neither of us were originally supposed to have upgrades on the car this weekend,” said the young British man after his arrival in Austria. “It was all supposed to come at Silverstone. Just the fact that we have at least something here, even if not everything, will be a step forward for us.”
“We have a sprint this weekend, so there will be more points at stake and that way we have a better chance of getting them. We pushed it and the team was able to build at least a few new parts.” he said Norris.
Even though McLaren’s development is delayed, they “cheered up” in Woking and managed to bring at least some of the new parts to Austria. With the exception of the upgraded floor in Baku, this is the first real upgrade to the MCL60 single-seater.
“This is our first package of improvements to bring performance progression. Of course, we deployed some innovations in Baku, but they were not supposed to bring a step forward in terms of the pure performance of the single-seater,” he says Norris.
“This is an improved version of what we brought to Baku, so it’s been a while and feels like forever. But at the same time, we did a good job. We wanted to make sure we did everything right and properly. I am therefore convinced that it will be a decent step forward for us, even though we wanted to bring it to Baku already,” he said Norris.
2023-06-29 19:26:26
#real #upgrade #Norris #Magazine #F1online.sk
