The B-spec package McLaren is planning to introduce for the British Grand Prix will be “very noticeably different” to the MCL60 it has been racing thus far.
McLaren started the year with a car it concedes missed its development targets.
That has seen an aggressive strategy put in place to claw back the lost ground.
The team’s technical department has also been restructured, with a triumvirate of department heads now reporting to team boss Andrea Stella.
McLaren introduced a new floor for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix which saw it make forward progress.
It then struggled in the heat in Miami before achieving a double-points finish in Monaco last weekend.
There, Stella confirmed to Speedcafe that the B-spec car mooted earlier in the season would break cover in time for the British Grand Prix in Silverstone.
Pressed further by Speedcafe on the topic, the Italian revealed that the revised package is a step evolution of the current car, and not a divergence down a new development pathway.
“It’s, in a way, evolving concepts towards directions that we see now are established as successful concepts, but we were not completely on the opposite side, like Mercedes was,” Stella explained.
“But I think it will be very noticeably different, let’s say, compared to what we have at the moment.”
McLaren sits sixth in the constructors’ championship with 17 points, nine clear of Haas and 18 back from Alpine.
Earlier this week it announced the appointment of Red Bull chief engineering officer Rob Marshall, who will join the team at the start of next season.
He’s one of the three men who will lead the revamped technical department moving forward, together with David Sanchez who will join from Ferrari around the same time.
Peter Prodromou, who already heads the aerodynamics department, is the final member of the trio.
There is other work ongoing at Woking, including the calibration of a new wind tunnel and simulator, both of which are set to come online in the near future.
Discussion about this post