Why McLaren is not rushing to install F1 upgrades

McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has explained why his squad isn’t hurrying to fit new upgrades to its car as fast as it can.

The Woking-based squad began the season on the back foot, admitting that it had missed development targets with the MCL60 car.

However, it brought a successful upgrade to Austria that boosted it up the pecking order and has since enjoyed a strong run of form, scoring four podiums.

Its next major update came in Singapore, 10 weeks on from the Spielberg package.

Speaking to media including RacingNews365,, Stella outlined the importance of not overworking the team regarding its development schedule.

“I’m focused on the process,” he said. “And you can have targets, you can say ‘these are my two, three milestones from a results point of view’.

“But in reality, you don't work against that. You work just at the fastest, reasonable pace that can be sustained in development.

“I mean, that's the definition, what we do is the fastest reasonable pace that can be sustained in development. Then we see where we end up.”

Danger of moving backwards

Stella argued that attempting to speed up the natural process could result in backward steps.

“If you go faster, you may start jumping the gun, shortcutting, finding yourself bringing things trackside and they don't work because you haven't been methodical enough," he said.

“So that's how we work.

“Looking at the season, if we really want to check against this best expectation, I think we are slightly ahead of where we would have expected to be even in the most optimistic prediction.

“This is credit and testament of the good work that has happened from a technical point of view, operational point of view and racing point of view at McLaren.”