F1 News: McLaren Chief Confirms Long Wait For Significant Upgrades After Poor Season Start

McLaren team chief Andrea Stella has confirmed when the next major upgrades will be coming to the MCL60.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella has broken the news on how long the team will be waiting before more upgrades are brought to the MCL60.

The Papaya team has had a less-than-ideal start to the 2023 season with ongoing issues on the MCL60 for both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. However, major upgrades are due to be brought in for the Canadian Grand Prix weekend which will be taking place on 16 - 18 June, followed by more upgrades which will come in for the British Grand Prix on 7 -9 July. 

According to Crash.net, Stella explained:

“The next sizable package of updates will arrive before the summer break.

“We are planning to spread the updates between the Canadian Grand Prix and the British Grand Prix.

“We will definitely avoid bringing new updates to Austria, because that will be a sprint shootout and sprint race weekend.

“And given the amount of updates we will bring we are not confident in bringing them to an event that will be very similar to Baku.

“In Baku we brought the new floor, but in those races we will bring bigger things and the floor will be introduced in Britain.”

Norris is currently sitting in ninth position in the drivers' standings with Piastri in fourteenth. The former has been able to finish in seventeenth position in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Miami with a sixth place finish in Australia followed by a ninth place finish in Azerbaijan. The latter unfortunately had to retire from the first race of his rookie season in Bahrain and then finished in fifteenth in Saudi Arabia, eighth in Australia, eleventh in Azerbaijan, and nineteenth in Miami. 

When asked if there will be any small upgrades brought to next weeks Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Stella confirmed:

“There will be small developments at Imola.

“But only minor ones compared to the step we need to take to be consistently in the points, which is our goal.”