Oscar Piastri, a natural from Australia, will be driving the McLaren MCL38 in the upcoming Emilia Romagna Grand Prix of Formula 1. McLaren confirmed that Piastri’s car will be equipped with the latest updates from the Miami team. In the previous race, Norris was the only one to receive the complete package in his MCL38. Norris took advantage of McLaren’s improvements and a timely Safety Car to secure his first victory in F1. On the other hand, Piastri, whose car had half of the new parts, was initially in second place but had his race ruined by contact with Carlos Sainz.
Stella, a representative from McLaren, denied that the difference in car specifications was due to parts shortage. She revealed that Piastri would receive the remaining updates in Imola. When asked if Piastri would be on equal footing with his teammate in the next race, Stella confirmed that he would. She explained that the updates required extensive work and testing to ensure their mechanical and aerodynamic effectiveness, so only one car was initially equipped with them.
Stella also clarified that McLaren conducted comparison tests between the old and new car configurations to ensure the reliability of the latest parts. The changes made to the sidepods and floor of the car were complex in terms of design and construction. Therefore, the division in updates was also made to ensure the overall reliability of the car, not just for performance comparison.
During the MCL38 launch, Stella admitted that the engineers did not have enough time to address certain areas of improvement on the launch specification car. When asked if the Miami upgrades were a response to these pre-launch comments, Stella confirmed that they were part of the initial plan. However, the implementation of the upgrades depended on the progress made by the aerodynamic department in developing and maturing the new parts into a complete package. Stella praised the aerodynamic department for their fantastic work so far.
