McLaren spy area for 'great improvement' with MCL40 F1 car

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has noted a key area his team must improve before the start of the year.

The Woking-based outfit enter the campaign looking to defend its double championship success from 2025.

However, it is facing a significant challenge as new technical regulations come into play, threatening to impact its position at the head of the pecking order.

The team got its year underway at the Barcelona shakedown event last week with both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri experiencing the car for the first time.

Offering an initial assessment of the car's performance, Stella insisted further work is needed to extract pace from the Mercedes power unit and the new active aerodynamics.

“Although these are very preliminary indications, I believe that one of the areas where there is great room for improvement is in exploiting the new power unit and all the options available to the driver,” he said.

“There is also a lot of potential to be extracted in terms of managing the variable aerodynamic configuration, referring to the alternation between Corner and Straight Mode.”

The cars will take to the track once again next week in Bahrain, offering another chance to take home learnings ahead of the season-opening round.

Although there are a handful of issues showing through now, Stella insisted it is a normal development at the start of such a major regulation change.

“That said, it is obvious that this generation of single-seaters is at a very early stage of development,” he said.

“Four years ago, when ground effect cars made their debut, we were in different circumstances because the power unit and tyres were essentially unchanged from the previous year.”