McLaren working on unpredictable MCL39 already, "especially for Lando"
13:52, 26 Apr 2025
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Lando Norris' season has been marred by errors the have seen him go from the hunted to hunter in the championship in only 5 rounds. McLaren are currently hard at work to fix the 'unpredictability' issues afflicting the MCL39, but team principal Andrea Stella believes the solutions may be a while yet.
Whilst teammate Oscar Piastri seems to be thriving in what is understood to be the dominant car of the season, Norris can't seem to get out of the downward spiral that has seen him underperform since the Chinese Grand Prix, which Stella believes is not his driver's responsibility at all.
McLaren are already working on Norris' issues
Regarding the technical changes in terms of behaviour McLaren hope to achieve to make the car easier to drive for Norris, Stella said the papaya outfit was already hard at work on them.
"This is something that the team can solve," said the Italian to media like GPblog, present at Jeddah. "This is something that the team are trying to, if you want, put on a clear and precise engineering basis so that the tests and the new parts that we will bring will be exactly the ones needed."
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"Some aspects of the car that we changed from last year to this year made the car overall more performant, and it's also a car that performs across all kinds of circuits. And this is thanks to some of the changes we've made."
Those changes seemed to have backfired - at least for Norris - in terms of car behaviour, making it less predictable. Whilst McLaren are working on the issues, the solutions may not be that easy to fix after all, but they will certainly be worth while.
Work will pay dividends with next year's F1 car as well
"But they are quite structural. They are embedded in the layout of the car. So it's going to be some work, but it's work that not only we want to embrace because it will improve the comfort of both drivers, and I would say especially Lando, but it's also good learning in terms of understanding the design even of next year's car."
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"While being very different from a technical regulations point of view, some aspects of how the driver drives the car actually remain valid despite the change of technical regulations. I think that's important: actions to improve this year, but also to improve the way we design cars for the future."
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Friday 27.03.26
Practice 1
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F1-stand 2026
Season
| Pos. | Driver | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | MercedesMER | 51 | |
2 | MercedesMER | 47 | |
3 | FerrariFER | 34 | |
4 | FerrariFER | 33 | |
5 | HaasHAA | 17 | |
6 | McLarenMCL | 15 | |
7 | AlpineALP | 9 | |
8 | Red Bull RacingRBR | 8 | |
9 | Racing BullsRCB | 8 | |
10 | Racing BullsRCB | 4 |
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