McLaren had a solid start to the season and finished third in the constructors’ championship after four races.
The team rolled out incremental updates to the Portuguese and Spanish Grand Prix while battling Ferrari for the best title behind Mercedes and Red Bull.
Although all F1 teams are increasingly having to shift resources towards the brand new 2022 rule package, the McLaren technical team, led by Technical Director James Key, continues to plan to add more upgrades to the MCL35M.
“If you look at the first test since this year, we just tried to continuously update the car in order to continuously improve the performance,” said team principal Seidl at the Spanish Grand Prix.
“We also brought upgrades to Portimao, for example, we also brought updates for the car here in free practice. And we are planning to bring further updates in the coming races.”
Seidl stated that the decision to completely switch his development team over to next year “is not far off” and that further updates will mainly focus on “low hanging fruits”, smaller upgrades that can bring clear performance benefits without the use of large resources are required for implementation.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL35M, during practice on the pits
Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images
“At the same time, it is also clear that we are not far from concentrating the entire team, the entire development team, entirely on next year’s car,” added the German.
“So I still think that in the end it will depend on whether there is still little hanging fruit in terms of development for this year’s car, which we then want to investigate further.
“But overall I think James [Key] has a clear idea of when he wants to fully upgrade to the next year. “
Seidl admitted that further improving this year’s car will be crucial if his team is to beat Ferrari to third place in the championship as Scuderia surpassed the Woking squad in Barcelona.
“It’s obviously a very close battle, especially with Ferrari, and it’s just important to make sure we keep improving the car over the next few races to keep this battle for 3rd place alive,” he said.
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