How a change in approach has seen McLaren's 2025 F1 upgrades go under the radar

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McLaren believes the upgrades that have helped to improve an "aggressive" 2025 baseline have gone unnoticed due to a change in the team's approach in Formula 1.

The pre-season anticipation that the 2025 season would comprise a battle between multiple sides hasn't been realised as McLaren has taken 10 victories in 13 races.

That has placed McLaren well on course to retain the Constructors' Championship, while drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris are engaged in a tight two-horse race.

The Woking-based squad had warned during the winter that it was making bold changes compared to the 2024-spec MCL38 in a bid to capture an elusive title double.

But while targets were achieved and a dominant start ensued, Stella revealed that he wasn't satisfied that McLaren's step was enough to have an unassailable margin.

"I've been surprised by this level of competitiveness," Stella told media including Motorsport Week at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

"When last year we discussed how much effort we wanted to put in improving the 2024 car, we definitely wanted to be very ambitious.

"We wanted to try and clear the 'going into race weekends and you never know who's going to win' situation we had last year, and we thought we needed to do a little bit more than the normal development.

"So how do we do that? We embraced a very aggressive approach to innovation. The MCL39 is a very innovative car.

"From an engineering point of view, we've been nervous as to whether some solutions whether we were actually in the condition to deliver them.

"But then when we looked at the lap times and the numbers in simulations, actually, we thought that wouldn't be enough. At the start of the season, effectively it wasn't enough.

However, McLaren has proven untouchable since last being toppled in Canada in June, recording three successive 1-2s with a commanding gap over the competition.

Stella has credited the run to updates McLaren has added in recent races, which he contends have gone under the radar due to how the parts have been implemented.

Whereas McLaren's ascent had been reliant on introducing extensive packages arriving at a single round, the reigning champions have spread things out this season.

"So, there's a factor that has happened during this season, which is the car has actually been upgraded," he highlighted.

"I think it was more noticeable in the past because we were coming with one-off upgrades, and they were in themselves very noticeable.

"But actually, even if we consider the last three, four races, there's been quite a lot of new parts that have been added.

"If we add all these in a single incidence, then we would say, 'Oh, McLaren has a big upgrade.'

"So, I think this has helped a lot in creating this trend and finding that in the last three races, we were definitely very competitive."