Stella backs Norris assessment over early weakness of new McLaren

McLaren boss Andrea Stella believes Lando Norris's comments about rear instability being a weakness of the new MCL39 "are fair."

Despite setting an eye-catching long run on Thursday, Norris struggled with oversteer and understeer throughout his time in the car, including a big snap at Turn 4 which forced him to engage reverse gear to get back on track. 

Bahrain is a circuit known for punishing rear instability through its big traction zones, with it not being a favoured venue for McLaren, with just one podium in the last 17 years - Lewis Hamilton's third place in 2010, with just four rostrum visits in the 21 years since the race was added to the calendar in '04.

Stella pointed this out as he felt Norris's representation was a "fair' description of where the reigning constructors' champions find themselves heading into the season-opener in Australia on March 16th.

"So I think the comments of Lando related to the rear instability are fair," Stella told media including RacingNews365.

"At the same time, when you come to Barahin, I would be very, very surprised if you didn't have rear-end limitation and traction limitation, somehow, these limitations are inherent to the circuit.

"They were an objective of our development, and according to what we have seen in the data, through what we've added in car development, if anything, we think we have improved from this point of view, but you improve by a quantity that is never going to make these kind of problems disappear.

"The only time I saw something change as dramatically was like: 'Oh, there's no problems with traction anymore, now the car actually pushes on in traction' was when we had the exhaust effect back in 2011 and 2012.

"I remember with my previous team (Ferrari), we introduced the exhaust effect from one session to the other, and the car had no problems with traction anymore, itt's a dramatic change of aerodynamic behaviour.

"But within what you can do, inside the scope of the regulations, which are fixed, you are always going to suffer the same limitation, but ultimately, you need to try and reduce those limitations more and more."