As the F1 paddock prepares to return to the 2025 Las Vegas GP, McLaren Team Principal Andrea Stella has opened up about the significant challenges his team faced at this track. He outlined the comprehensive plan to turn their fortunes around this weekend as compared to the previous two years.
Reflecting on the previous season, Stella did not mince words. He candidly spoke about the struggles faced by McLaren at the Las Vegas GP. In 2024, they were a very distant P6 and P7 in the race.
“Vegas last year was one of the most difficult races,” Stella admitted. “We had difficulties with the behaviour of the tyres, as you say, and the behaviour of the tyres in qualifying, because we were not fast, and the behaviour of the tyres in the race, because we had a lot of rain.”
Aerodynamic and setup struggles
Beyond the rubber, McLaren faced a conundrum at the F1 Las Vegas GP with their car configuration on the high-speed street circuit. Stella detailed how their attempts to gain straight-line speed ultimately hurt their overall performance.
“We also had some aerodynamic issues,” Stella explained. “When we tried to offload the rear wing, we saw that we were losing too much efficiency, and we also had a bit of issues with the set-up of the car in a way, trying to compensate this graining and some of the understeer.”
The combination of tyre degradation and aerodynamic imbalance left the team with a result that Stella noted “wasn’t satisfactory enough”.
A clear direction for 2024
However, McLaren has used the data from that challenging weekend to chart a new course for this year’s return. Stella believes the hardships of last year have provided a roadmap for improvement.
“The review from Vegas last year gave us a lot of information to try and find a way to improve,” he said. “I would say that from a tyre point of view, from an aerodynamic efficiency point of view, and from a car set-up point of view, we know in which direction we should change compared to last year.”
While the team has worked hard to rectify the issues, Stella remains realistic about the uncertainties of the unique F1 Las Vegas GP circuit.
“Will it be enough to be competitive now? We will only see it in Vegas,” Stella concluded. “But definitely we took actions in response to what we saw last year.”
