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| Toto Wolff gave his verdict on McLaren winning the Hungarian Grand Prix |
The McLaren resurgence in Hungary has sparked a debate over exactly how much of a role the MCL40 upgrade package played.
Mercedes’ Simone Resta suggested that more was behind the McLaren result. Andrea Stella said the upgrades alone sparked McLaren’s return to the F1 summit. Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has weighed in, claiming a clear step forward for McLaren. Yet, he also pointed to McLaren’s recent impressive record at the Hungaroring.
Toto Wolff declares McLaren step, but…
McLaren’s revisions for its MCL40 in Budapest included a revised floor body design, rear wing endplate and rear corner winglets.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri went on to contend for the victory. After a Carlos Sainz collision and later a gearbox failure, Piastri was eliminated from the race, as Norris drove on to an impressive win.
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told PlanetF1.com and others post-race that “the improvement, from a competitiveness point of view, can be entirely ascribed to the upgrades that we took here.”
Mercedes deputy technical director Simone Resta was not so sure.
“The update package was certainly significant, and it must have contributed to their performance,” Resta said on the Nu Silver Arrows radio show.
“At the same time, if you look at the gap between their two cars, there was clearly more to it than the upgrade alone.
“Throughout the year we’ve seen McLaren perform very strongly, with the balance of performance between their two drivers varying from race to race.
“We’ve also seen strong performances from Lando several times this season.
“Budapest may simply have been one of those weekends where he found himself in a particularly good place with the car, the setup and tyre management. I think it was probably a combination of both factors.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has had his say. Similarly to Resta, he acknowledged that McLaren found performance with its upgrades.
But Wolff was also keen to stress the Hungaroring as a potential caveat.
McLaren has now won the last three Hungarian GPs.
“When you ask the artificial intelligence who would be the favourites in Budapest, the artificial intelligence is going to say McLaren, because they were the dominant team here in the last few years,” Wolff told PlanetF1.com and others.
“So definitely one of the good tracks for them, and not very good for us.
“So we need to be careful not to swing from everyone is suddenly competitive, to a team is suddenly not competitive.
“I think they’ve definitely done a step. They are in the fight. We haven’t brought an upgrade for some time, and you can see that this is going to be a development fight also going forward.”
- Jamie Woodhouse
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