djos wrote: ↑16 Sep 2022, 02:22
Can you please post the highlights? It’s behind a paywall.
Perfect setup & SC bad luck
The hope is alive. McLaren closed the gap to Alpine with a seventh place from Lando Norris. The engineers found the perfect set-up compromise for the Monza. Again, the McLaren was fast in qualifying, but this time not a tire eater in the race.
Actually, McLaren had already prepared for a weak race weekend. Drivers and engineers feared being given a poisonous cocktail in Monza that could have spelled the death knell in a duel with Alpine. In the end, the opponent left for fourth place in the World Championship with a zero, while McLaren took six points. The gap remains large at 18 points. But at least with six remaining races there is still hope of catching Alpine.
Only the failure of Daniel Ricciardo clouded the mood. An engine failure, probably due to an oil leak, cost him eighth place. And Lando Norris a position against Sergio Perez, which according to McLaren's calculations he would have had to cede anyway without the incident on the track. The Red Bull had closed the gap to within three and a half seconds on fresh tires.
McLaren used the safety car for a final change to fresher, used soft tires. Perez slipped through without stopping in the pits. Team boss Andreas Seidl describes the ulterior motive: "We had expected that Hamilton would stay out in front of us on the older softs. Which he did. We couldn't have defended ourselves against Perez in a restart. So we wanted to turn the game around, and the two attack with newer tires at the restart." But nothing came of it because the race director decided not to give the race a late release.
No tire problems for McLaren
Norris had already lost a better position in the final billing at the start. The Englishman couldn't get out of the blocks at all and tumbled from third to sixth position. There he got stuck in a DRS train in the first part of the race, which his teammate was leading. After the early VSC phase, Norris let himself be tricked by Fernando Alonso, whom he had surprised himself on the opening lap. The Spaniard completed five laps ahead of the Englishman. In lap 18 Norris restored the old starting position.
The McLaren was the faster car than the Alpine at Monza. Before the race weekend, there had been a lot of arguments against the papaya racing car. He doesn't like stretches for little downforce. The McLaren is one of those inefficient cars with excessive air resistance. The team was faced with the choice between being fast in the corners and slow on the straights or vice versa. In other words: a lot or few wings.
The second option was chosen in order to be able to keep up on the straights. The McLaren were still average in a straight line, but continued to do well in the corners. In three training sessions, drivers and engineers managed to find a perfect setup. The proof was that in addition to Norris, the troubled Ricciardo also made it safely into Q3. The fear of only being fast in qualifying did not come true. It wasn't that just the extra grip of the soft tires over a lap masked the car's weaknesses. The McLaren were quick over the distance too. "We didn't have our usual problem with tire wear," said the team boss happily.
McLaren surprises itself
The traditional racing team surprised itself on one of its scary tracks. "We had a surprisingly good race pace." Better than Alpine's, which it didn't even look like on Friday's training session. "We made a few good changes to the car during practice. We found the right compromise between speed for a fast lap and protecting the tires for the race."
Despite asphalt temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius, Norris preserved the medium tire over 35 race laps. Surely, McLaren's better understanding of the spa upgrade has helped. However, the team is not sure whether the tire problems have already been sorted out or whether the racetrack has helped.
Singapore will shed light. The street circuit pushes the rear tires to the limit. On paper, the course should accommodate McLaren because Singapore demands maximum downforce. Efficient aerodynamics are irrelevant there because there are no long straights. At best, Alpine doesn't even want to let McLaren get any closer. Enstone announces a new underbody for the Singapore GP. The data from the wind tunnel already promise good progress.
