McLaren team principal Andrea Stella denied their engine supplier Mercedes has been slow to share information about how to get the most out of their power units.
Following their dominant, championship-winning campaign last year, McLaren began the season far off the pace of Mercedes. Lando Norris finished the season-opening race in Australia over 50 seconds off winner George Russell.
The sudden change in form between the two teams prompted claims Mercedes had been slow to share data with their customers, of which McLaren is one of three. However Stella said there are other reasons for McLaren’s less competitive start to the season.
“In terms of power unit exploitation, I would say that the main limitation as a customer team has been the timeline,” he explained. “It’s been a pushed programme, it’s been pushed from all teams, for all competitors.
“The delivery of the MCL40 that was pushed up to the last minute. The same has happened for the power unit manufacturers.
“It’s relatively normal that in this condition, as a customer, you tend to be a little bit on the back foot, and we are learning together with our HPP [Mercedes High Performance Powertrains] engineers how to use the power unit.”
Stella insisted Mercedes have been forthcoming with information about their power unit. “They are learning together with us. It’s not like information is held back. There’s maximum sharing.
“We work very well with HPP and with our engineers. We’ve been world champions together three times in the last two years, so the relationship is great.
“It’s more about catching up with the timeline. So, we remain pretty optimistic that, like I said before, we are now not far from maximum exploitation from a power unit point of view.”
Following the frustration of failing to start with either car in China, McLaren rebounded in Japan. Oscar Piastri led the opening stages and finished 13 seconds behind race winner Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who got ahead of him through a Safety Car period.
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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine