Abiteboul: "At McLaren they won't have many new developments"

For next season, Formula 1 has introduced a token system, which means that only limited development can be done on the car for 2021. For some teams this will have advantages, for others it means that they will have to adapt their structure. Cyril Abiteboul expects that there will be a number of teams that will have difficulty with the new system. For example, McLaren is going to change engine manufacturer, which will require a lot of changes to the chassis.

Daniel Ricciardo will make the switch to McLaren next season, after two years at Renault. Abiteboul indicated earlier that he won't be pulling any driver, so Esteban Ocon and Ricciardo will be treated equally. According to Abiteboul there's no need for that either, since McLaren can develop and learn a lot less from Ricciardo's knowledge. "McLaren will need a lot of tokens to integrate their power source into their car."

Keep out of development for 2022

"With the current structure of Formula 1, in which the cars are more or less frozen until next year, McLaren will need all his tokens to integrate that new engine into the chassis, so they will have little further development. This will allow us to continue working closely with Ricciardo next season", Abiteboul said in an interview with Motorsport.com.

So although the Australian will remain involved in the development for 2020 and 2021, it will be different for the early development for 2022, in which the new rules come into force. "We will not involve him in 2022. But he won't know much about that anyway, because for the driver 2022 is still a long way away", Abiteboul concludes.