Stella: Singapore GP helped McLaren clear doubts over Baku upgrade

Andrea Stella says the Singapore Grand Prix helped McLaren settle a question raised by its Baku upgrade: the package had not made the MCL40 slower, he said.

McLaren introduced reworked sidepods and cooling at Baku to improve straight-line speed on Azerbaijan's long back straight. Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri struggled for pace there and at the following round, the Bahrain Grand Prix staged at Sepang in Malaysia. Stella said McLaren upgraded both cars at once, leaving it without a direct comparison with a car still on the previous specification.

Stella said Sepang's unusually rough asphalt disrupted McLaren's usual correlation between trackside readings and its simulation tools, making the data appear abnormal. Singapore, he said, was a more normal circuit and allowed the team to resolve the doubt.

Stella also pointed to other performance factors: power-unit optimisation played a significant role in Baku's lap time, while chassis factors including gear ratios penalised McLaren on long straights in its current configuration.