McLaren Brought the Upgrades. Where Was the Speed?

A major upgrade gave McLaren plenty to test in Baku, but a 1.484-second FP2 deficit left Lando Norris frustrated and the team facing a night of setup work.

McLaren arrived in Azerbaijan with substantial changes to its car. By the end of opening practice on Thursday, September 24, the most striking number was still the gap to Mercedes.

Norris finished FP2 sixth, 1.484 seconds behind George Russell. Oscar Piastri was eighth, another 0.026 seconds back. For a team bringing so much new hardware, it was an uncomfortable first impression.

“We’re miles off,” Norris said afterward.

What made the result harder to take was that the car hadn’t felt particularly bad. Discovering how far that feeling was from the pace at the front was, he said, “a little knife in the heart.”

Yet McLaren’s technical assessment was more encouraging than its position on the timing screen. That tension defined its opening day: the team could see promising signs in the package, while its drivers still needed more speed.

A substantial change to the MCL40

The update reached across the sidepods, engine cover, floor, diffuser and rear suspension fairings. McLaren also brought a new rear-wing specification.

These were connected changes. In McLaren’s technical briefing, Chief Technical Officer and Chief Designer Rob Marshall explained that the suspension fairings had been designed to work with the revised floor and bodywork. The package drew on lessons learned during the first half of the season, addressing specific weaknesses alongside broader performance gains.

Autosport’s analysis highlighted the visible extent of the redesign, including more heavily undercut rear sidepods, reshaped inlets and a revised engine-cover profile.

McLaren also used FP1 to compare rear wings, with Piastri testing the new, higher-downforce H-Wing while Norris ran the previous specification. Both cars used the new version in FP2.

There was plenty to evaluate before the team could settle on its best configuration.

Encouraging data, unfinished setup work

Marshall’s explanation was that McLaren was still learning how to extract the package’s performance.

In the team’s practice report, he said the initial data indicated that the car was behaving as its simulations had predicted.

“However, it's clear we haven't yet unlocked its full potential.”

He identified further work on both chassis setup and power-unit optimization for Baku’s particular demands. His post-session comments also described the aerodynamic behavior as encouraging.

That gives McLaren a reason to keep working with the package. It doesn’t establish how much lap time remains available, or how quickly the team can find it.

For Norris, that uncertainty was the problem. A car that feels reasonable to drive still has to deliver against the stopwatch.

A crack, cable ties and lost running

The upgrade’s first day also produced an image McLaren would probably have preferred to avoid: temporary cable ties on its newly revised car.

Marshall explained that the team had spotted a crack and added tie wraps to stop it deteriorating while engineers worked on a proper solution. He characterized the issue as minor and noted that spare parts were limited.

The disruption cost both drivers running in FP1. McLaren said the temporary repairs then allowed both cars to complete their FP2 programs, with a more comprehensive fix planned before Friday’s sessions.

The lost track time complicated the learning process. But the available evidence does not establish that the crack or its repair caused the full performance deficit.

Why the practice gap needs context

Norris backed out of a stronger lap late in FP2, so his best completed time did not capture everything he had shown during the session.

McLaren’s program also differed from much of the field. It used medium tires in FP1 and started FP2 on hards, then switched to softs for qualifying simulations and kept those used softs for its high-fuel running.

Those details matter when comparing practice performance. They do not provide a reliable correction that can simply be subtracted from the 1.484-second gap.

There was also a more encouraging assessment from the other side of that deficit. Russell said Mercedes’ race pace looked closely matched with McLaren and Red Bull. Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, likewise cautioned that the timing sheets overstated the true separation.

McLaren therefore ended Thursday with a clear job and an unresolved question. It needed to turn encouraging technical data into a car its drivers could push faster. Friday’s final practice and qualifying would show how much progress it could make.

The upgrades had arrived. Their full value was still to be demonstrated.