McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has played down how aggressive the team intends to be with its new car for the 2020 F1 season.

The team has bounced back from a poor end to last season and is on course to finish fourth in this year’s championship. But although next year’s technical regulations will be largely the same, Seidl says the team has changed some of the concept behind its car for next year.

“I wouldn’t call it ‘radical’,” he said. “but of course with the gap we have to the top cars under the same regulations we tried to make a big or a decent step, which means also that some of the concept stuff we will change.”

“I would say where we are right now this is not a risk it’s an opportunity,” Seidl added.

“Our target is clear we want to make the next step so hopefully we can jump somewhere in between where we are right now and the three top teams. Which would be the next, I think, great achievement for us as a team.”

McLaren has made the biggest lap-time gain of any team at more than half of the races so far this year. However Seidl said only minor updates are coming for the MCL34 over the final races.

“We still have stuff that we bring for this year’s car. The regulations stay pretty much the same so there’s stuff that you can carry over then for next year but it’s not like if we develop our new stuff for next year’s car and then bring it.”

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2020 F1 season