McLaren have identified Mercedes ‘weak points’ as they prepare Miami Grand Prix upgrade

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McLaren are looking to close the gap with Mercedes during the season hiatus, and have identified where they can target the championship leaders.

Despite McLaren managing to earn a podium finish at the Japanese Grand Prix thanks to Oscar Piastri, there are still question marks surrounding the team’s performance.

McLaren admitted to limiting Lando Norris during the race in Suzuka, which kept the reigning world champion to a P5 finish.

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And even with McLaren making a blatant strategy error, Piastri managed to hold his own against George Russell and Mercedes, showing that the current leaders are not unbeatable.

But according to McLaren’s technical director of performance, Mark Temple, the team are hard at work in identifying the weak points within Mercedes to close the gap.

READ MORE: Naomi Schiff thinks Oscar Piastri is in a much worse mood than Lando Norris at McLaren

McLaren now believe Mercedes are ‘not invincible’ after Japanese Grand Prix success

Speaking on the F1 Nation podcast, McLaren’s technical director of performance, Mark Temple, spoke about the work they’re doing to try to close the gap to Mercedes.

He noted that the Japanese Grand Prix showed them that Mercedes are not the invincible force that many felt they were at the start of the season.

“Honestly, that’s very difficult to say. And people who know me will know that I don’t like to speculate about those kinds of things too much. I always think it’s better to just focus on what’s in front of you and what you control, what you can do about it.

“But I will say, obviously, in Japan, Mercedes didn’t finish first and second. So they have their weak points. Absolutely, they’re beatable. Hopefully, we can be the ones who are able to beat them. But I think they’re certainly not invincible, that’s for sure.

“It’s really important that they’ll be working very hard to try and build their performance and pull away from other teams. We’re all working very hard to try to close those gaps. And I hope we’re the ones to do it first.

“For sure, the fact that there’s a gap means that it’s a natural place to add components because there are two races that you can’t add stuff to. So we’ll be aiming to bring some new bits to the car. Hopefully, it’s a big step, but let’s see. I think we’re happy with the development we’re doing.

“The team is working really hard. Will it be enough to jump (past) any teams? I honestly don’t know. At this point, it’s all about hope… It’d be nice to think we can, definitely.”

READ MORE: Ralf Schumacher expects Red Bull ‘negotiations’ for Oscar Piastri if Max Verstappen joins McLaren

McLaren focused more on chassis development to complement Mercedes power unit

Speaking further in the podcast, Temple noted that the bulk of McLaren’s development focus during this hiatus will be on the chassis side of things.

“For sure, there will be some power units, performance increments. I would be surprised if those are large. I think they will be, maybe I don’t know, let’s say we’re going to say 10%. There’s a start point, but that’s, that’s a little bit of a made-up number.

“I think the bulk of performance will come from the chassis development because the power units are much more stable. They’ve been developed for many years. There’s more restrictions. It’s more it’s harder to add performance to those things in season…

“Whereas I think on the chassis side, we were only able to start working in the aerodynamics in the wind tunnel in CFD at the beginning of last year, and they’re still on quite a sort of a early phase…

“You know, it’s still F1, there’s always more performance to find. But I think we’re very much, you know, focused on the chassis performance aspect now and in terms of the gap to Mercedes, you know, the chassis performance and exploitation.”

Despite initial fears that the new regulations were exposing McLaren’s weaknesses, their mindset on improving the car suggests they have a lot more left to deliver.

The hope is that McLaren can make some significant strides in time for the Miami Grand Prix, thus giving them the edge over Mercedes.