McLaren isn't far away from switching its focus to developing its 2022 car according to racing director Andreas Seidl. With huge regulation changes incoming for 2022, as well as an enforced budget cap of $145 million for 2021, there is a point this year at which every team will have to decide that their development for the current car is finished and to move onto next season. For some, like Haas, they've already decided against any further development for this year and already have dedicated their resources to next season. For more competitive teams, the point at which they decide to switch is pivotal. Too early, and they risk losing out this year. Too late, and they'll start on the back foot for the new regulation cycle. McLaren have some more updates planned for their MCL35M, but aren't far away from the switchover, as Seidl explained on Friday. "If you look since the first test this year onwards, we simply tried to continuously bring updates to the car to make continuous steps forward with performance," Seidl told media, including RacingNews365.com . "We also brought upgrades, for example, to Portimao. We brought updates to the cars here in free practice. And our plan is to still have further updates in the coming races. At the same time, it's also clear that we are not far away from switching over completely, the entire team, the entire development team to fully focusing then on next year's car." But Seidl said that there's still the opportunity for development of the current car, if an idea could yield big gains. "So I still think it will depend in the end if there's still any low hanging fruit around for this year's in terms of development, which you then want to further explore," Seidl explained. "But I think James [Key, Technical Director] has a clearer idea of when he wants to fully switch over focus to next year."
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