McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has explained how the squad have taken steps to resolve their Las Vegas Grand Prix issues following a “difficult” race for them back in 2024.
Despite their increasingly strong form during the second half of last year’s campaign – which ended with them claiming their first Teams’ Championship since 1998 – McLaren faced a much tougher outing when F1 returned to the Las Vegas Strip Circuit for the venue’s sophomore race.
While Mercedes took a 1-2 finish up ahead, the papaya outfit struggled for race pace as Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri crossed the line in sixth and seventh respectively.
Ahead of the 2025 visit to Las Vegas – an event that could prove crucial in the ongoing Drivers’ Championship fight between Norris, Piastri and Max Verstappen – Stella has admitted that the team had plenty of learning to do after their 2024 performance.
“Vegas last year was one of the most difficult races,” the Italian explained. “We had difficulties with the behaviour of the tyres, and the behaviour of the tyres in Qualifying because we were not fast, and the behaviour of the tyres in the race because we had a lot of graining.
“We had also some aerodynamic issues – when we tried to offload the rear wing, we saw that we were losing too much efficiency. And we also had a bit of issues with the set-up of the car in a way, trying to compensate this graining and some of the understeer.
“So, the review from Vegas last year gave us a lot of information to try and find a way to improve.”
As such, Stella is hopeful that McLaren now have more knowledge on what might work this time around in Las Vegas.
“I would say that from a tyre point of view, from an aerodynamic efficiency point of view and from a car set-up point of view, we know in which direction we should change compared to last year,” he added.
“Will it be enough to be competitive now? We will only see it in Vegas. But definitely we took actions in response to what we saw last year, because certainly the performance wasn’t satisfactory enough.”
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