Aston Martin: “Foolish” to ignore McLaren’s upgrade approach

Aston Martin thinks it would be “foolish” not to investigate if McLaren’s alternative approach to upgrades has been a key factor in its Formula 1 success.

McLaren has bucked the trend of its rivals this season in terms of how it has structured its car development programme.

Rather than seeking performance gains through multiple major car upgrades, it has instead stuck with a floor design that it first unleashed at the Miami Grand Prix.

Having a known package has allowed McLaren to focus more on optimising its car each weekend, and fine-tuning the MCL38 into a regular race winner.

Such consistent on-track performance is in contrast to rivals like Aston Martin, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes who have all faced headaches when upgraded floors have triggered balance or other car performance headaches.

And it has even prompted Aston Martin, which started the season strongly before its form faded on the back of an Imola upgrade, to suggest that it must get to the bottom of whether McLaren’s approach is actually one that could be a better route for it to adopt too.

Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack suggested that there could a case of more performance coming from tweaks considered smaller, rather than the more typical major car overhauls.

Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

“We are looking at this a lot,” said Krack.

“If you compare the pace, and you see when have they [McLaren] made a step, and you can correlate that with some upgrades that are declared as we never have the full picture, there is some correlation where you can say, ‘okay, this is what it has been changed, and what has it potentially done’.

“When you see, for example, the Zandvoort upgrade, it's a bit here, a bit there, a bit there. You see how fine and complex these cars have become, so I think it would be foolish not to look at it.”

Krack thinks that the way that other teams like Mercedes also managed to unlock car performance shows that Aston Martin can set its sights on a good step forward if it gets a proper handle in delivering a well-balanced car.

“We were on a level with Mercedes at the beginning of the season for the first races, and then they have won races,” added Krack.

“So it is possible to make substantial steps with these regulations if you get the car stable and behaving the way the drivers want it.

“There is not a pure race for downforce that you used to have in the past. Where it's really difficult here is it is more about getting the stability, but getting the balance and the load obviously as well.”