McLaren is likely to alter the concept of their 2020 car as part of their effort to catch the top three teams.
This season has seen the Woking-based squad surprise many by recovering from a torrid end to last year to sit as the ‘best of the rest’ in P4 in the Constructors’ standings.
However, leading the midfield isn’t enough for McLaren and though they could wait until 2021 to try and make the significant jump to the front, team boss Andreas Seidl doesn’t want to.
“We still bring some small bits to the next races also but I make sure that the team is flat out on 2020 car,” he said via Crash.net at Suzuka.
“The regulations are pretty much the same and there is stuff you can carry over then to next year, but it’s not like we develop our stuff for next year’s car and then bring it [now].
“I wouldn’t call it radical but of course with the gap we have to the top cars, under the same regulations, we will try to make a big, or a decent, step which means that some of the concept stuff of the car we will change.”
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Certainly confidence is now a lot higher that fourth in this year’s Teams’ Championship is secured, with a 34-point gap back to Renault.
“I’m happy we were able to extend the lead again to our competitors and I think we’ve seen now there is a kind of a trend in the last three or four races, we clearly have the fourth-strongest car,” Seidl stated.
“I think we have everything in our hands now to secure this P4 at the end of the season which will be a great achievement for us as a team and at the same time it’s important now to stay flat out for next year’s car to make the next step.”