McLaren have decided to cease development on their 2022 car to focus on next season, when evolution under the new technical regulations will be vital.
Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo have scored points a combined nine times in nine races and, on three occasions, they have walked away from the race with no points to their name.
The silver lining in the last two races has undoubtedly been the Australian’s much needed upturn in form, but six points from the latest double-header in Baku and Montreal is not the kind of form the British side will have come into the year hoping for.
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Team principal Andreas Seidl now wants to switch his attention to figuring out how to. extract performance from the current setup, rather than adding anything more to the broth.
“The main thing at the moment is still to try to unlock more performance from the package that we have,” he said.
“And then we need to see which further small little changes to the car will come throughout the course of the season.”
The German revealed that the Woking-based team are to “pull the handbrake in terms of further developments” owing to the $140 million budget cap which, spread between damage, freight, development and more, becomes extremely thin over the course of a 22-race season.
“You really need to be very careful with how you use your wind tunnel time,” explained Seidl.
Ricciardo and Norris finished 11th and 15th respectively in Canada last time out, and their form in the last five races has been a far cry from Norris’ podium performance in Imola.
Ricciardo was running in the points in Montreal when a late Safety Car was deployed, but he was powerless to stop his descent to P11.
“I mean obviously I try to be a little more positive,” he told Viaplay Finland after the race.
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“But, yeah I don’t think we had any strengths today, let’s put it like that.
“Even with the fresh tyre on the restart, we weren’t really able to make much of an impression, so I felt like I was just able to hang onto some cars around me.
“But [there was] nowhere I felt I was quicker, at best I could match them in a couple of corners but, certainly a few of our weaknesses were exposed today.
“So, we need to address that and there’s a quite a lot to dissect after this race for us moving forward.
“I think we have to get into it now and figure it out.”
McLaren are currently fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, eight points ahead of Alpine, who are showing no sign of stopping development themselves this year.