As Lando’s MCL60 exited the garage for free practice and headed up the Styrian hills and into public view, it looked a little different, which was the result of a mammoth effort behind the scenes.

With separate day and night shift teams working on the car, the lights are always on somewhere within the McLaren Technology Centre. This has never been truer than in the last few months as they worked tirelessly to deliver the latest MCL60 upgrade.

The second stage of our concept shift debuted on Lando’s car at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix, and Team Principal Andrea Stella told the F1 Nation podcast that energy at the factory reached new levels as the team got closer to delivering the new package.

“The mood at McLaren is definitely high,” said Andrea on the F1 Nation podcast. “I would say that it is not just the mood, what is also high at the moment at McLaren is the level of energy and the level of awareness of the potential that we are building in the team.”

The upgrade package, which, when completed, will include fresh bodywork revisions, follows last year's decision to change the direction of our car development.

The timings of the decision and the scope of work made it impossible to get the new concept of car completed in time for the start of the season, with it more important to get the development done well, than rushed out too quickly.

This saw the first instalment bolted on for Azerbaijan, with further upgrades promised. It represents a significant change to the MCL60 and a positive step forward, but not a silver bullet. With Austria being a Sprint weekend and practice being limited, it's expected that the times from FP1 won't be representative. 

“I think we need to distinguish that from the launch spec car to now, there hasn’t actually been much of an upgrade to the MCL60,” Andrea continued. “There was the new floor, which we took to Baku, but this was, if anything, to bring our floor concept in line with the most common concepts we see now in the cars, with this floor not being very advanced.

“We needed to revise some concepts more comprehensively, and that is why not much has landed trackside yet because it took a few months to design and start producing the parts. From Austria, we should start seeing new shapes in the MCL60, and we definitely hope that we start to see better lap times and competitiveness.”

The second stage has been applied to Lando’s car this weekend and Oscar is expected to get it at the British Grand Prix. This is due to time constraints – with portions of the project being completed ahead of schedule, there were enough parts for one car this week, with more available next week in time for Silverstone. 

It’s not uncommon for teams to upgrade only one car at a time. Waiting for both to be ready when potential performance is available would not make sense. Andrea and the team want to see them on the car as soon as possible to see the gains before optimising them.  Plus, it offers the benefit of comparing the car with and without the package. 

Andrea continued: “We realised that the car needed a substantial redesign, so we started this big effort of redesigning the aerodynamics, and some mechanical parts, and we are finally ready for these upgrades to land on the car trackside. 

“This started in Austria and will continue for a few races as parts become available. The aerodynamic performance is the main area we targeted, which will be reflected in more downforce and possibly less drag. This normally [translates into] genuine and immediate lap time. We will have to wait to see if this is the case and if it brings us a few tenths of lap time.

“In the meantime, we are working on solutions to improve how the car interacts with the tyres, and this will come over the next races as well.”

In a separate interview with F1, Andrea said that further upgrades were due at the British and the Hungarian Grand Prix, with the team taking a “50%, 25%, 25%” approach to installing them.

The F1 Sprint format will replace two of the practice sessions this weekend, but the team can still gather plenty of data on the new package from the competitive sessions. And even with only one practice session, the Red Bull Ring offers plenty as an optimal testing venue.

“It is a permanent track, and it’s relatively smooth, so you do not need to compromise too much from a setup point of view, like you would in Monaco or Canada, for instance,” Andrea continued. “It is a track that features low-speed and high-speed corners, and it challenges the car regarding straight-line speed.

“Despite being a short track itself, it is actually quite dense, similar to many other tracks, so it is definitely representative. Even though we only have one practice session, the track characteristics of the [Red Bull Ring] meant that we didn’t want to leave [the new package] in the factory, we wanted it trackside. Therefore, we take what may look like a bit of a risky approach in delivering some new parts to a sprint event.”