McLaren surprises with huge upgrade in Singapore

The McLaren Formula 1 team will debut a fresh batch of upgrades at the Singapore Grand Prix in what is its biggest introduction of new parts since Austria.

At Spielberg earlier this year, McLaren made a huge leap in performance through upgrades and has been fighting at the higher end of the field ever since.

The jump in performance came after it commenced the season on the back foot, competing towards the rear of the grid.

The Singapore upgrades will only be fitted to Lando Norris’ car, with teammate Oscar Piastri set to receive the enhancements in Japan next week.

“Since Austria, [it’s] the thing that we believe will help us move forward the most since then,” Norris told media including RacingNews365. in Singapore.

“We’ve not run it on the track yet so I don’t want to say too much until we've actually got it to work properly.

“It’s a good step, the team worked hard to get at least one of the cars here and then Oscar will have the rest in Japan too. An exciting couple of weekends for us.”

What upgrades have McLaren brought to Singapore?

The upgrades include a revised front wing geometry to provide a gain of aerodynamic load and a reshaped engine cover to improve flow conditioning to the floor.

The floor itself has been fully revised and includes upgates fences, floor edge and diffuser shape. Both the floor and the new engine cover will work in conjunction with the new sidepod inlet shape.

The Halo cockpit protection device has also been altered to aid airflow over the rest of the bodywork.

At the rear of the car, the brake duct geometry has changed to work alongside a modified suspension, with the rear toelink shroud also modified.

The rear wing endplate has been altered to increase local load while a beam wing specific to suit the needs of the high-downforce Singapore circuit has been fitted to the MCL60.