McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has revealed that the Woking-based team are already in a “good place” ahead of 2024, with their new car coming along very nicely.
It’s been a strong second half of 2023 for McLaren, who have skyrocketed up the pecking order ever since they introduced a sizeable upgrades package at the Austrian Grand Prix.
Prior to Austria, McLaren were towards the back of the field, whereas now they’re arguably second in the pecking order behind Red Bull.
Their developments have made a huge difference, to the extent that the British outfit have claimed back-to-back 2-3 finishes.
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Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have demonstrated exceptional pace in the upgraded MCL60, with Piastri having even won the recent Qatar Grand Prix sprint race.
McLaren’s rise has seen them close to within 11 points of Aston Martin in the fight for fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, a position they’ll likely move into at the United States Grand Prix this weekend.
Whilst they’re continuing to push, the outfit are also preparing for 2024, with the help of their own wind tunnel.
Since 2010, McLaren have been using a Toyota facility in Cologne; however, this will no longer happen due to the side having opened a wind tunnel of their own.
It means all of their F1 operations can now be conducted at the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC), something which is massively beneficial.
McLaren are “happy” with how things are going ahead of 2024, with Stella having revealed that everything is being developed using the new wind tunnel.
“We started testing in the new wind tunnel only with the new car for next year. So everything we see here is being developed in that wind tunnel. And obviously, has been developed in the CFD,” Stella told the media.
“Let’s say we are happy with the correlation we have, in terms of development tools and what we have here trackside.
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“The early runs in the new MTC wind tunnel, with the new car, have also been encouraging in terms of correlation with our CFD expectation.
“And also with what we could see with some models that we used as a test in both environments, to see how well they were correlating.
“Even in this case, we found good results. So I think we are in a good place.”