McLaren’s impressive form leading to ‘cautious approach’ with F1 upgrades

McLaren F1 boss Andrea Stella has conceded his team’s impressive form has resulted in a cautious approach in terms of car development.

McLaren dominated last weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix as Lando Norris won by over 20 seconds.

Norris could have won by a greater margin had he not backed off in the closing laps after a couple of brushes with the barrier.

It now means McLaren sit 41 points ahead of Red Bull in the constructors’ championship with six rounds to go.

Norris now trails Max Verstappen by 52 points in the drivers’ championship.

Speaking after the race at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, Stella reiterated McLaren’s desire to take their time with car upgrades amid their strong run of results.

“In fairness, that was one of my thoughts after the race,” Stella said as quoted by Motorsport Week. “Because we do have some stuff in the pipeline and obviously when you have this kind of performance on track you always may approach things from a cautious point of view in terms of development.

“At the same time, we need to trust the process, we need to trust the way we’ve been working so far. I’ve said already that we have taken our time to make sure that once we deliver trackside we have done the due diligence. So I don’t think this will change our plans.”

While McLaren dominated the Singapore GP, Stella suggested the margin was “flattering”.

The Italian cited Ferrari’s final stint of the race with Charles Leclerc, who was as fast as Norris on the hards.

Leclerc started the race from ninth on the grid after a scrappy qualifying session.

“In Formula 1 I’m not sure you can back off too much because backing off means that the others may catch and we don’t know what the plans of the others are,” Stella added.

“In Red Bull we see that in a track in which they thought they would have not been very competitive, ultimately they were potentially second best. I think we haven’t seen Ferrari today very well but even Ferrari, P1, P2, they seem to be as fast as us and the final stint of [Charles] Leclerc is very competitive..

“So I think the race may give us a little bit of a flattering, I think you say it like this.  The situation from a competitiveness point of view, I would say we need to keep being aggressive in terms of development.”