McLaren’s Andrea Stella: “It looks like we have some work to do from a performance point of view”

Andrea Stella admits the McLaren F1 Team has some work to do from a performance point of view after a disappointing showing during Friday’s free practice sessions at the Bahrain International Circuit.

Neither Lando Norris nor Daniel Ricciardo were able to break into the top ten in either session, with Norris ending a best of eleventh fastest in the evening session.  Ricciardo couldn’t better seventeenth in either session and also lost track time due to a water leak on his MCL36 in the evening.

Stella, the Executive Director of Racing, says the team had made progress with its brake cooling issues that plagued them during the recent pre-season test at the Bahrain track, but they were left lacking when it came to performance, and they will be working hard overnight to unlock some more pace from the MCL36 to give both Norris and Ricciardo the chance to push into the top ten.

“After today, it looks like we have some work to do from a performance point of view, and we will do that overnight, trying to be as ready as possible for qualifying and the race,” said Stella.

“We needed to stop Daniel a little early this evening to investigate a water leak. This is nothing too serious and will be fixed for the remainder of the weekend. Despite this, today we could achieve pretty much all the programme we had planned.

“Following the issues we had at the test, today we made a step forward with our brake cooling, thanks to rapid work done at the factory to deliver new parts.”