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McLaren to continue 'drip-feeding' updates to their MCL35M

McLaren have confirmed they will continue fitting their MCL35M with updates still to come, despite the team slowly shifting focus to the 2022 regulation changes.

McLaren's James Key has outlined the team's plans for their MCL35M, saying they will continue to 'drip-feed' updates to the car for a while yet. This comes after racing director Andreas Seidl explained ahead of the Spanish GP weekend that the switchover point to concentrate on the 2022 car and huge regulation changes isn't too far away. The 2021 season is proving to be a particular headache for all the teams, due to the constraints of the budget cap meaning a delicate balancing act between developing this year's car before switching over to develop the '22 car. "If you look since the first test this year onwards, we simply tried to continuously bring updates to the car to make continuous steps forward with performance," Seidl told media, including RacingNews365.com. "We also brought upgrades, for example, to Portimao. We brought updates to the cars here in free practice. And our plan is to still have further updates in the coming races. At the same time, it's also clear that we are not far away from switching over completely, the entire team, the entire development team to fully focusing then on next year's car." Technical Director James Key outlined some of the plans the team have already put into place, and explained the updates brought along. "We've been putting little bits and pieces really from the start of the season with our race one spec car," Key told media, including RacingNews365.com in Spain. "Since then, we've been bringing minor updates as we've gone really and as they've come through. This race was the first to introduce sort of heavier, heavier steps that we wanted to make. "So we had a tweak on the front wing architecture, a new front wing, on the floor as well, the regulations really kicked in at the side of the floor, that's still an area which is ripe for development, and still quite raw. "There's still plenty of performance to be found in some of these fresh areas. So I guess it's the first round of those areas of the car. "So we have updated the car with the new parts, which is great news and an excellent effort from all the guys in aero and everyone at the factory to design it and push it through production and process to get it here on time and give those drivers the sets that they needed." But the updates aren't finished yet, with Key explaining what's still to come for the 35M. "I know we have some more parts coming. We haven't finished the MCL35M yet. There's a few updates still to come. There's some in a conceptual phase at the moment as well and we'll bring those as we go along. There's no set target event at the moment for many of them, we will put them on the car when they seem to be ready and available to test some cases at the right kind of track. "So Monaco's not always the best place to bring certain things so maybe to wait for the following circuits and keep sort of drip feeding the car with new bits."

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