McLaren spy 'very interesting' trick on heavily upgraded Red Bull

McLaren boss Andrea Stella has singled out the sidepod design of Red Bull's heavily upgraded RB22 as "very interesting" and said that "each team" will be looking to extract its secrets.

For F1's return at the Miami Grand Prix, most teams brought a huge upgrade package, including McLaren and Red Bull, with the most visibly eye-catching being Red Bull's interpretation of Ferrari's 'Macarena' rear wing. 

However, it was another area of Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar's RB22 that caught the eye of McLaren team principal Stella, as he explained how he felt the Milton Keynes squad had been "quite smart and innovative" in its upgrade approach.

"For those who are technically interested, we are in a very, very interesting phase," Stella told media, including RacingNews365. 

"It is very interesting because if you see the sidepod concept that Red Bull introduced, it is quite different to the sidepod concept that, for instance, Mercedes and Ferrari have adopted, and the McLaren style is further different.

"There will be a stabilisation at some stage, a convergence, but we look like we are quite far from this convergence.

"So I think there will be a process of looking at each other, testing things and certainly each team will be testing, taking a look at the Red Bull concept to see the advantages.

"They have been quite smart and innovative in the way they have used some legality concessions to introduce such geometry.

"I think the overall designs of the cars are far from converging. This doesn't mean that some things have already started to look like: 'Oh, that is the direction everyone has taken', but with the 2025 cars, after a few years of the regulations, they started to look very similar to each other.

"I think we are still far from these conditions."