One of the main areas of McLaren upgrades at the Austrian Grand Prix is improving the sense of Lando Norris and improving performance in the 2025 car.
Norris frequently refers to the difficulty of extracting the greatest potential from the MCL39, as Brits struggle to grasp their handling characteristics to the same extent as their teammate Oscar Piastri. Australia has led the championship after an impressive season so far, but with new suspension and aerodynamic components introduced at the Red Bull Ring, McLaren says Norris’ feedback is at the heart of its development.
“There’s clearly a clear details that can be obtained from the report from Rand,” said Neil Holpy, technical director of engineering. “I think we understand what he needs to improve his car, and some of the upgrades we have are biased towards his comments.
“As you can imagine, you’re trying to solve what the driver needs and adjust the upgrade, but I think you fully understand what he needs and you can do some minor improvements in many areas where he continues to help him in the last few races and help him move forward.”
Explaining Norris demands that he be more comfortable in the car from new parts, Holpy says that the mechanical changes made in Canada should also play a role in improving his emotions.
“It’s about being able to make the tires on the limit a little better for him,” Horney said. “So we just did a little kinematic adjustment and we know we’ll get better.
“They had some small negatives that they didn’t necessarily want to introduce at the beginning of the year, and running early into the season gave us the confidence that it wasn’t really an issue, so we were able to introduce this change without the real concern that it wasn’t getting worse and should be better.
“All of these things, we’re trying to find the best of different scenarios. It was the same as suspension. We were worried in one area. We weren’t worried during the season, so we’re just trying to try the best performance.
Houldey said that all new components are also available to Piastri, but if you don’t know the benefits of performance, you can choose to stick to the previous configuration of your car.