Andrea Stella says McLaren will have 'completely new car' at Miami Grand Prix

[p]Mercedes, who provide McLaren's engines, have won all three races so far this season but ‌the last race in Japan was closer between the two teams.[/p][p]Australian [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/player/piastri-oscar/MqKAIeUf/"]Oscar Piastri[/a] ended up second to ‌Mercedes' Italian [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/player/antonelli-andrea-kimi/ptGu0mT1/"]Kimi Antonelli[/a] at Suzuka and might have won but for a ‌safety car period helping his rival.[/p][p][b]"There was always the idea to deliver a completely new ‌car, especially from an aerodynamic upgrades point of view, for the North ‌American races,"[/b] Stella told reporters at the team's factory.[/p][p]"We could keep up with this plan. Obviously, the fact that the calendar has been changed sort of helped a little bit, like I'm sure (it) ‌helped all the other teams that could work more ⁠streamlined towards upgrading the car rather than ‌being busy with racing."[/p][embed guid="d2fa2832-0d39-4682-af24-2b7577722ccb" url="https://x.com/F1/status/2042248466710122865" social-type="twitter" /][h2]No racing in April due to Gulf conflict[/h2][p]There has been no racing in ​April because the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix were called off due to the Iran war and its impact on the Gulf region.[/p][p]That ​means Miami will be the fourth race of the season rather than the sixth.[/p][p][b]"Across Miami and Canada we will see an entirely new MCL40 (car)... this is what ⁠I would expect of most of ​our competitors so it's not necessarily going to be a shift in the pecking order, it will be effectively just a check who has been able to add more performance within the same timeframe,"[/b] said Stella.[/p][p]The team are third in the standings, 89 ‌points behind Mercedes who finished the first two races one-two.[/p][p]McLaren, constructors' champions for the past two years and winners of the drivers' title last year with [a href="https://www.flashscore.ca/player/norris-lando/WSVABbVF/"]Lando Norris[/a], are more limited than others on wind tunnel use and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) because each team's allocation is linked to where they finish each season.[/p][p]However chief designer Rob Marshall told reporters that was not the big disadvantage it appeared to be.[/p][p][b]"The truth of it is you have many potential developments that you want to run through CFD or the wind tunnel and some are good and some are bad," ‌[/b]he said.[/p][p]"So if you're bright and you approach it the right way and you ​think about stuff methodically... you just don't bother doing the stuff that ‌wasn't worth doing and you carry on doing the stuff at the top of the list.[/p][p][b]"So in a way you free up resources, because if you've got a lot of wind tunnel resources and CFD time, you end up doing a lot of stuff that's nice to have - but actually we're not ⁠in the business of nice to have. ⁠We're in the business of ‌the stuff that actually works and so that's the stuff you do."[/b][/p]