McLaren reveal development delay as some parts ‘did not make it’ for launch car

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said there were some development projects that “didn’t make it” in time for their launch car.

The Woking outfit revealed their car on Wednesday having shown their livery the month before but were rather secretive in the images they shared.

The MCL38 was given its first laps around Silverstone but aside from that, McLaren were keen to keep their cards close to their chest.

McLaren boss predicts tight development race in 2024

McLaren’s 2023 season started on the wrong foot with the team lagging behind on its production schedule and it resulted in a poor start to the campaign.

The team have managed to avoid that for 2024 but Stella did admit there had been some things not ready in time for the launch date.

“In terms of the innovations, I would say it’s not that the innovations didn’t make it,” he told media including PlanetF1.com. “I think it’s more that some development projects didn’t make it.

“But when you embark on some development projects, obviously you want to try to get them to deliver as soon as possible but there’s room in the way we have designed the car for this project to lend later on.

“There’s no restrictions from a layout point of view when some of them [the upgrades] do become available. So it’s just a matter of the time required for projects to mature and then be ready to be delivered.”

McLaren were one of the best developers of their car last year with the MCL60 transforming first with Lando Norris in Austria and then both drivers at Silverstone.

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As for this year’s development race, Stella does not think any team will be able to make such a big leap.

“Concerning the development of the cars, I think this year we will see with lap time, we’ll start to see some diminishing return,” Stella, who has been in the job for a year now, said. “For two years we have seen progress, especially aerodynamic development being quite steep.

“But now I would anticipate that towards the end of the season, it will become harder for designers to be able to keep a very steep development rate.

“This is why I said before that we can be competitive if we are able to keep the development rate that we have experienced over the last 12 months.”

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