McLaren has finally introduced its much-anticipated floor upgrade for its 2024 Formula 1 car at the Mexican Grand Prix. The team describes this upgrade as “heavily revised.”
After seeing competitors like Red Bull, Aston Martin, Ferrari, and Mercedes face challenges with their new floor designs earlier in the season, McLaren decided to wait before bringing out a second major upgrade, following its successful one in Miami.
In the regular document released by the FIA before each F1 event, McLaren showed its updated floor along with two cooling adjustments made for the high altitude of Mexico City.
“The floor design has been heavily revised, with geometric changes in all areas, resulting in an increase of aerodynamic load across all conditions,” McLaren stated in the FIA document.
According to Motorsport.com, this is the moment McLaren has been preparing for, but it’s still not fully confirmed if the team will use this crucial part for performance in the new ground-effect era during the race weekend.
Only Lando Norris will have access to the new floor, as his car will be driven by Pato O’Ward in FP1 and will only be fitted partway through the one-hour session.
Oscar Piastri will receive the new floor later in the season, but it seems unlikely that he will have it for next weekend’s Brazilian Grand Prix.
The new floor is still considered to be in the early stages of development, even after being delayed for a while, so more adjustments may come before the end of 2024.
When asked if McLaren should have been quicker to add the floor along with its other new parts in Austin, team principal Andrea Stella responded last weekend: “If we were in condition to produce them, release them in time to have them in Austin, we would have brought them in Austin.
“The timing for new parts and upgrades is based on the natural process of designing, finalizing, and producing those parts.
“I have mentioned before that we wanted to ensure what we bring to the track performs well, and we are quite encouraged – and I must say well done to our aerodynamic team – that the parts we brought [to Austin] worked as expected.
“And hopefully that will also be true for the parts coming for Mexico and Brazil.”
