FittingMechanics wrote: ↑05 Sep 2024, 21:50
I think they are just thorough. Why rush things? You spend money making them and then if it doesn't work you lost that money. The upgrade path with bigger packages insteaf of trickling it in is obviously working.
Don't worry about journalists taking things out of context and pushing narratives. If anything it says the team has more aces in their sleeve.
It is Andrea Stella who says they were worried they would hit the same road-block Mercedes & Ferrari hit though. I do not concern myself with clickbait titles.
I read the articles that are interesting to me and draw my own conclusions.
The fact of the matter is that they actually had a
very promising forecast for development potential internally. With Andrea being quoted to say the following before the season started :
"The gradient we established last year that led to the Austria and Singapore development, it seems like we can maintain it," Stella said.
"In the background, we are already starting to work on further developments which we hope to bring relatively soon in the season and they also seem to be quite interesting.
"In terms of the regulations themselves and the development at McLaren, we seem like a linear gradient of development can be maintained."
What they expected after 2023, was a continuation of the gradient they saw after the large upgrades introduced in Austria and Singapore respectively, and the first big one arrived in Miami this year, where Andrea Stella was also quoted to say the following :
Despite the impressive start, Stella said there is still lots of work to do in its pursuit of addressing more low-speed concerns.
“Not to the entirety that we would have wished,” Stella said. “There is still some more specific work and upgrades that we need to deliver to address low speed in particular.”
It's the wording that was interesting here. He says specific work and upgrades that they needed to deliver. Basically, from what they initially were thinking on how to follow-through with this "gradient of development" that Stella mentioned, they certainly had planned subsequent upgrades after Miami, but of course we all know that is not what happened.
Instead we have had circuit-specific parts being brought and a new front-wing in Austria which I am not even sure they've been using every round since.
I speculated that they might have hit some trouble with development a while back, and my comment expressing those concerns should be buried on earlier pages, but I was a little bit too lazy to look for it.
But yeah, what Stella has said now about them having doubts that the developments would not bring the desired results in the real world, shows that the initial plan for in-season developments has, at the very least suffered a setback and at the very worst has made them re-think the potential of the package and what the limit may be.
And again, these aren't my words, quote by Stella :
“But there's a reason why we haven't brought some upgrades – because we see that, had we pressed the go button, we might have had some doubts when these parts were tested full-scale on the real car.
It's slightly worrying.
