McLaren brought aerodynamic upgrades to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with Oscar Piastri running in second place for much of the race before a late lock-up saw him plummet out of points contention.
Lando Norris was caught up in contact between the two Alpine drivers at a Safety Car restart on Saturday, with Franco Colapinto’s hefty lock-up having punted teammate Pierre Gasly out of contention, with Norris also shunted into the wall on Gasly’s outside.
The weekend’s updates saw McLaren reintroduce its ‘H-Wing’ rear wing concept as seen in Monza, alongside further aerodynamic upgrades.
Despite the team having shifted its priorities onto its 2027 challenger, previously signed-off parts will continue to make their way onto the car before the season concludes.
While no points were scored at the weekend, Stella believes the team saw enough to sign off on the validity of its new parts. In the immediate term, however, he added some parts were damaged when Norris was caught up in Saturday’s collision.
“There’s a tail of parts that will land at trackside, so we will see still some new parts coming to the MCL40,” Stella confirmed to PlanetF1.com and other accredited media in Baku.
“But at the moment, as we speak, all the efforts are already concentrated onto next year’s car, and what we see coming trackside is the result of parts being released a few weeks ago.
“The upgrades worked well throughout the weekend, we added some lap time to the car.
“Somehow, we did not see the effect of the upgrades because our car in general does not perform very well in these kinds of corners, so we would have needed a much bigger step to make a difference in Baku.
“We are happy, the data seemed to confirm that there are no issues with the upgrade. So hopefully, there will be more benefit at the coming races.
“This has been a great effort by the entire team. Unfortunately, I think a couple of parts will have been lost with the crash, which is another downside of having been involved in these sort of situations. But luckily, there are some more new parts coming, so we should be okay for the coming races.”
