Andrea Stella feels the McLaren F1 Team are ‘ready to go racing’ this weekend in Bahrain despite a tough pre-season test for the team last week.
The final day of the test at the Bahrain International Circuit saw McLaren lose some more valuable track time as they looked to solve an issue surrounding its braking system, and the combination of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri completed the least number of laps across all ten teams.
Stella, who was appointed Team Principal of the Woking-based team during the off-season following Andreas Seidl’s departure to the Sauber F1 Team, says the issue that blighted them during pre-season should be solved before racing gets underway, and he was confident about the pace of the MCL60 going into the new season.
“The final day of pre-season has been challenging, as we had some downtime during the repair of a minor ongoing issue,” said Stella. “We are not concerned about the issue for the race but it required some attention today to ensure we could complete as much of our run plan as possible.
“Despite those small setbacks we could still get some good information about the car in representative night-time conditions. We were able to see that we have made some steps in terms of performance across the test, and we have some valuable information ahead of the race next weekend.
“I would like to thank all the team, both trackside and at the factory, for the hard work during the test. Likewise, I would like to thank HPP for their support.
“We are now ready to go racing and look forward to the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix.”
McLaren will get to see if the fixes to their braking system are fixed when free practice gets underway this Friday in Bahrain.