McLaren is not going to give up on its upgrades as they are set to trial more in the upcoming F1 Portuguese GP despite apprehensions from Carlos Sainz.
They wanted to try it extensively in F1 Eifel GP but the weather conditions derailed the idea, where McLaren were then forced to put all of the upgrades on Sainz’s car. The Spaniard did not feel right with it, even though, it had limited test time.
As per Sainz, good upgrades would work straightaway, which wasn’t the case in Germany. With more analysis and investigations done since then, McLaren has decided to continue with it for this weekend’s Portuguese GP, where the weather is expected to be better.
Not just the nose concept but McLaren will bring more aero parts to better understand the upgrades. “As we prepare to head to Portugal, our focus since Germany has been on analysing and understanding the data we gathered at the Nurburgring so that we come to the right conclusions and find the best way to progress,” said Andreas Seidl.
“Based on that analysis we will continue to use our new nose box aero concept combined with a known competitive car configuration. We will continue to bring more new upgrades to the car to test on Friday and also further explore and quantify our new aero concept,” summed up Seidl, as McLaren hopes to assess if anything is wrong with the idea.
It will not be just McLaren testing its part but Pirelli too will be bringing the 2021 prototypes for a tyre test in FP2. With no historic data from Portimao, it will be not only new for the team but also their drivers Lando Norris and Sainz.
For Norris, it will not be his first time in a F1 car at Portimao, as he previously tested the McLaren MP4-26 in 2017 as part of the award he won. The Brit, though, is not certain if that run will give him any edge over his F1 rivals with track knowledge.
As for Sainz, who wasn’t full convinced with the upgrades from McLaren, hopes that they can rectify the shortcomings and learn more from some valuable track time. “We’ve been working hard these past days with all the data gathered in the race and hopefully we can address the issues we faced coming into Portugal,” he said.
Here’s Carlos Sainz post Eifel GP on McLaren upgrades