McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has shared some information on the team’s upgrades for the upcoming Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with the Woking-based team being hopeful that they can take “another step” in the right direction.
It’s been a challenging start to the 2023 F1 season for McLaren, with the side arguably having one of the worst cars on the grid.
Despite this, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both scored their first points of the season at the Australian Grand Prix, elevating McLaren to fifth in the Constructors’ Championship.
McLaren know, though, that they do have in immense amount of work to do, with the hope being that their upgrades in Baku will support their fight to challenge for the top 10.
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“We know that in Baku we start another step of the season by starting to have some upgrades on the car,” said Stella.
“They are not going to be a game-changer but it will be the first step on what we hope is going to be multiple upgrades and we hope we will be in condition to fight for points in the future on merit and not only to eventful races.”
Norris’ sixth-place finish and Piastri’s eighth-place finish at his home race certainly wasn’t expected, especially with Piastri having been eliminated in Q1.
McLaren struggled for pace at the Albert Park Circuit yet did well to keep out of trouble during the race, which became one of attrition.
On paper, McLaren don’t have the fifth strongest car so will likely fall down the table should their upgrades not improve their performance, something Stella is seemingly aware of.
Stella isn’t letting himself or the team “get carried away” by their strong result in Australia; however, he does admit that it was nice to finally score “some good points”.
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“We don’t get carried away,” Stella added.
“We know that it was a very eventful race but it is good to score points after we have had some difficult races at the start of the season, in which we were in condition to score points but because of various issues, we couldn’t.
“It’s good to come off these first three races with some good points.”