McLaren has finally unleashed its long-awaited floor upgrade for its 2024 Formula 1 car, with what the team calls a “heavily revised” upgrade fitted for the Mexican Grand Prix.
After rivals Red Bull, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Mercedes all encountered issues with new floor developments earlier in the season, McLaren had held off introducing a second major new floor development after the one it successfully introduced in Miami.
In the regular ‘Car Presentation Submissions’ document released by the FIA ahead of each F1 event, McLaren has revealed its revised floor along with two cooling tweaks typical for running in Mexico City’s thin air at high altitude.
“The floor design has been heavily revised, with geometric changes in all areas, resulting in an increase of aerodynamic load across all conditions,” reads McLaren’s explanation of the new floor in the FIA document.
Autosport understands from the team that this is indeed the moment McLaren has been waiting for to introduce its long-awaited floor upgrade, but it is not yet fully confirmed if it will race the part so critical to car performance in the new ground-effect era this weekend.
It will only be available for Lando Norris to use, with his car being driven by Pato O-Ward in FP1 and the only being fitted for a short while mid-way through the one-hour session.
Oscar Piastri is set to get the new floor at a later point in the season, but at this stage it is thought to be unlikely that this will happen at next weekend’s Brazilian GP.
The new floor is also understood to still be relatively early in its development process, even after being held back for so long, so further tweaks to the part could arrive before 2024 concludes.
The Woking-based team had chosen not to add the new floor in its major upgrade package introduced at Austin, where it had a revised front wing and front suspension package, plus changes to its rear brake duct area and rear wing.
When asked if McLaren should have been more aggressive in adding the floor to its other new parts in Austin, where Ferrari led the way on race pace and Red Bull also seemed to have McLaren covered over one lap, team principal Andrea Stella said 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 time of new parts and upgrades landing trackside is the natural time of designing, finalising and then producing the new parts.
“I have said before already though that we wanted to make sure that what we bring trackside is well-behaved and we are quite encouraged - and I have to say well done to our aerodynamic team - that the parts we brought [to Autin], they worked as expected and hopefully also that will be the case for the parts coming for Mexico and Brazil."
