Yeah I believe the update worked better than expected. It's a good problem to have, but it's still a little worrying that they don't know why (or maybe they do and I'm mistaken).

But, things definitely seem to be moving in the right direction at McLaren. At least they identified the previous philosophy was a dead-end and they made the choice to switch, knowing the first half of this season would be a right off. There's the new wind tunnel and some decent staff signings coming on board too.

Yea the main downside is the car is a dog on the straights so if it isn't a circuit where you can pass on the corners, the car needs clean air to go fast. Thankfully McLaren has good enough strategy to maneuver around that problem.

I don't think he'd be doing much better than what Hamilton is doing now. McLaren and Mercedes probably have the best driving pairing in my opinion.

Papaya refers to the colour orange. Some people refer to the orange car as papaya.

You can read about the history of the papaya theme here.

What competitive team would that be though? Ferrari? Mercedes? It's not impossible for McLaren to be a challenger to RB next year. I don't think they'll be beating them every race but it's possible that they'll be a lot closer.