McLaren is being “even more cautious” about Oscar Piastri’s schedule ahead of the Australian Grand Prix to avoid distractions
This weekend’s Australian Grand Prix is the home race for Oscar Piastri, who is contesting his second season in the premier class. Reason enough for McLaren to keep a close eye on its driver’s schedule
In view of the current boom in popularity of Formula 1 and the associated demand, which is largely due to the success of the Netflix series “Drive to Survive”, interest is high, especially at the home Grand Prix.
McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella explains: “In general, we are paying more attention to the drivers’ schedule during a race weekend this year.”
“We want to make sure that the drivers have the time to focus on performance, but also have time to rest and relax and so on. But for Melbourne we will be even more cautious. “
Drivers should be able to focus on the job
“There are a lot of requests,” reveals Stella. “But some we will accept, others we will have to turn down in order to protect the drivers and be able to perform.”
At last year’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, which began with an “opening ceremony” and a concert on the main straight where the drivers were introduced, Lando Norris was less than enthusiastic. “It’s definitely more of a show now than it was a few years ago,” said the Briton at the time.
“To be honest, I just want to come here and race. I’ve never been the biggest fan of events like this … It’s not what I like to do,” the McLaren driver noted regarding the distractions.
McLaren is not planning any major updates for the time being
As far as major upgrades for the MCL28 are concerned, Stella remains cautious ahead of the Australian weekend. It is still too early in the season to “put together a convincing package that represents a significant step,” he says. Instead, “smaller things” would bring “a few milliseconds”.
The plan “doesn’t have much to do with logistics these days”, Stella continues. “The biggest challenge is: do you bring upgrades to sprint races or not? “
Because in China and Miami, the fifth and sixth stops on the season calendar, the teams and drivers can expect a sprint weekend with only one free practice session and correspondingly little time to test and verify the upgrades.
“And then there is another challenge, the budget limit,” says the team boss. If you put every update on the track straight away, it would be exhausted early on. “So you have to be convinced that it’s a good upgrade. Then you press the green button and spend the money.”
The first reason for not bringing upgrades to Australia is therefore “that it takes time to put together a convincing package that represents a real step forward. “
