Stella: Urgent work needs to happen to fix the situation

Following their resurgence since the Austrian Grand Prix back in July, that saw the team score two podium finishes in Britain and Hungary, McLaren endured a tough weekend at Spa-Francorchamps, the only highlight being Oscar Piastri's second place in the Stint Race, while Lando Norris was complaining about his MCL60's straight-line speed, managing only seventh place on Sunday.

Reflecting on his team's weekend, Andrea Stella told Motorsport.com: "This weekend told us that where we could do work.

"The car is improved in some areas," he pointed out. "This was confirmed. But, at the same time, this weekend confirmed the areas that we haven't addressed yet. [It] gives us a reality check that there's more work to do and, to some extent, confirms that those areas, they need to be addressed quite urgently.

"This urgency, for instance, comes from the fact that a second race after [the summer] shutdown is Monza. You can't go racing in Monza like [we did in Spa].

"So, there's urgent work that needs to happen at McLaren to fix the situation," the Italian maintained.

McLaren have brought a major upgrade to their MCL60 which has worked wonders to their performance, but it seems the team missed to work on making their car more efficient, hence their struggles with straight-line speed in Spa.

Stella explained: "We have to very frankly admit that, while this configuration gave us an advantage in the previous days, [the GP] was starting to be a significant issue.

"Overall, let's say there's some learning we take out of this weekend. I think the opportunity to remark is not like we necessarily wanted to target this configuration.

"Fixing the efficiency of the car at low drag is on the to-do list. But it was lower than some of the priorities that we have worked on in the previous months," he concluded.