After two days of testing, McLaren has banked a total of 239 laps between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Norris was fastest on the opening day though a focus on long runs on Thursday saw both drivers down the order.
McLaren won last year’s constructors’ championship and is early favourite for this year’s title, part of a four-team group tipped to feature at the front of the field.
After two days of testing that remains true, with McLaren, Ferrari, Mercedes, Red Bull all showing in line with expectations.
The order in which those teams sit is less clear, as the performance of each is masked by their specific programs, though there is an air of confidence at McLaren.
It has made progress in some key areas, though limitations remain with Norris complaining about a lack of rear-end stability.
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“It feels similar, which is a good start,” Norris said on Thursday of the McLaren MCL39 versus last year’s car.
“Nothing’s been majorly addressed, let’s say, it’s not like that much has changed.
“We’ve just tried to make the car quick all around and add more load.
“We still want to try and focus on some areas more than others,” he added.
“We’ve struggled a bit more with the rear than what we would have liked over yesterday and today, but it’s still early days.”
It’s a point team boss Stella has also conceded, though he noted the cooler conditions and tendency of the Bahrain circuit to induce those characteristics.
It’s also a circuit McLaren has historically struggled on.
“Looking at the track layout, looking at some kind of demand associated with the low grip, for instance, and the high macro roughness, big demand on traction; we have a justification as to why our car wasn’t necessarily working very well at this track,” Stella reasoned.
“We have worked over the last couple of years to try and improve on those requirements that are needed in circuits of this kind, where you have tight corners, for example.
“We think we have made some progress [while] trying at the same time to retain some of the strengths that we had developed over the years, for instance in some medium speed corners.”
Stella believes this year’s car is better suited to the nuances of Bahrain, which is an encouraging step, though remains wary that unseasonably cooler conditions could be contributing to that.
However, he also accepts Norris’ comments.
“The comment of Lando related to the rear instability, they are fair,” he admitted.
“At the same time, when you come to Bahrain, I would be very, very surprised that you don’t have a rear-end limitation and traction limitation.
“Somehow, these limitations are inherent to the circuit.
“Definitely, they were an objective of our development and according to what we have seen so far and the data that we had through car development, if anything we think we have improved from this point.”
While rear-end stability for Norris was a top line issue, Stella has taken a more holistic view from the two days of running thus far.
“It will be incomplete to say that we only want to improve rear grip in terms of stability in entry and traction,” he explained.
“We also want to improve the behaviour of the car in mid-corner in terms of front-end.
“If anything, these three attributes is what we’ve been trying to improve over this last couple of years and now as we enter the third season.
“You have an aspiration to remove them entirely but in reality it’s just a game of who mitigates these limitations the most, which are inherent to a Formula 1 car, and especially to a Formula 1 car in a track with this kind of layout.”
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