2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[genarro]

There are plenty of options for outsourcing the manufacture of specific parts eg Judd, Yamaha, Mechachrome

Too much of a financial burden for the team.. I think a works deal would be a better option. Getting back with Honda would be the best option...

[BMMR61]

Data correlation is huge in this sport. Get it right then you can engineer strong aero and make steady progress. The trends since McLaren started it’s recovery have been in two major phases;
1. 2019 - Italy and Russia in 2021, and
2. Thereafter
The first was steady improvement leading to those aforementioned races that produced the team’s 1-2 and Lando’s pole and race dominance until the rain arrived.
Then a period of decline with lacklustre development and a mediocre MCL36 last year.

Why do I labour the point? Because some fans and journalists have for some time been painting a picture of doom for McLaren. My take, and thankfully it’s shared by some here is as follows;
The team saw the unfolding of a “blind alley” in design parameters of the MCL60, blew time out on that direction and traced a new path. They awoke the public to the misstep and predicted a slow start to 2023, born out in practice and qualifying to be true. However the “unfinished” new car, if not exactly shining in the race, produced surprising pace and deg. Surprising to the engineering team and those fans who without cheerleading saw the hint of promise in the car at this premature stage of conception.
So back to the correlation word. Correlation is especially for wind tunnel and more particularly new wind tunnel. The most advanced tunnel is useless without good correlation, this is my biggest concern for McLaren’s medium term progress.

Last year our reliability was top notch, recovery from slow start was decent, pit stops second only to RB, tactics very good. Losing Seidl was disappointing but I’m sure we’re going to see some good signings before 2024. I remain confident that Piastri will prove an inspired choice for the future ahead (and I’m not Australian!”

[mclaren111]

Data correlation is huge in this sport. Get it right then you can engineer strong aero and make steady progress. The trends since McLaren started it’s recovery have been in two major phases;
1. 2019 - Italy and Russia in 2021, and
2. Thereafter
The first was steady improvement leading to those aforementioned races that produced the team’s 1-2 and Lando’s pole and race dominance until the rain arrived.
Then a period of decline with lacklustre development and a mediocre MCL36 last year.

Why do I labour the point? Because some fans and journalists have for some time been painting a picture of doom for McLaren. My take, and thankfully it’s shared by some here is as follows;
The team saw the unfolding of a “blind alley” in design parameters of the MCL60, blew time out on that direction and traced a new path. They awoke the public to the misstep and predicted a slow start to 2023, born out in practice and qualifying to be true. However the “unfinished” new car, if not exactly shining in the race, produced surprising pace and deg. Surprising to the engineering team and those fans who without cheerleading saw the hint of promise in the car at this premature stage of conception.
So back to the correlation word. Correlation is especially for wind tunnel and more particularly new wind tunnel. The most advanced tunnel is useless without good correlation, this is my biggest concern for McLaren’s medium term progress.

Last year our reliability was top notch, recovery from slow start was decent, pit stops second only to RB, tactics very good. Losing Seidl was disappointing but I’m sure we’re going to see some good signings before 2024. I remain confident that Piastri will prove an inspired choice for the future ahead (and I’m not Australian!”

[Lucky]

[Macklaren]

This sounds pretty damn exciting tbh

It's got a ton more potential in it than the first iteration we're going to see at race four. We expect to see maybe a further step in Imola.

"It'll be a step in the right direction, it won't be the whole shebang, there's more to do. But as I was saying, [Sakhir] is not the best track for us.

"I think in the upcoming races we'll probably see a little bit of a mix-up, and I'd anticipate us being a little bit more competitive. And because it's so tight, if you've got some updates coming early it can move things around quite quickly."

[mwillems]

I think I read somewhere that they will still be bringing some small updates to the next few races.

[101FlyingDutchman]

I can’t remember the last time there was a bullishness wrt to team announcement. However as we’ve started on the back foot let’s hope the statements hold water

[mwillems]

I'm not sure I'd go so far for as saying bullish, they are still targeting a quite modest 4th fastest car by seasons end, but you can certainly feel the optimism from Mclaren.

But I suppose what happens depends as much whether other teams also can see similar gains ahead, this is something that we or Mclaren can not know. Exciting to see though!

[FittingMechanics]

I'm not sure I'd go so far for as saying bullish, they are still targeting a quite modest 4th fastest car by seasons end, but you can certainly feel the optimism from Mclaren.

But I suppose what happens depends as much whether other teams also can see similar gains ahead, this is something that we or Mclaren can not know. Exciting to see though!

I don't remember the team talking how much potential their development path has. This does seem out of character. Maybe it is just leadership style of Stella?

[the EDGE]

I'm not sure I'd go so far for as saying bullish, they are still targeting a quite modest 4th fastest car by seasons end, but you can certainly feel the optimism from Mclaren.

But I suppose what happens depends as much whether other teams also can see similar gains ahead, this is something that we or Mclaren can not know. Exciting to see though!

Well, what they actually said was a top four car, at the time I assume they thought mixing it RB, Merc & Ferrari, or at least at the back of that fight

Of course things have changed since then and AM have taken a step forward and Merc a step back, and the whole field are now closer together. Merc won’t be standing still, so we could be looking at a top 5 later this year

Their goal for this year really has to be getting back to a position of having both cars regularly in the top 10, and fighting for podiums again. That would be significant progress

[_cerber1]

Oscar Piastri: "I'm sure that in Jeddah we will look much stronger than in the first race of the season. On the straights, our car has good speed. I don't know if this is due to the position of the front wing, or our car is generally strong in this areas.

[MrGapes]

Straight line speed is definitely better than last year by a good margin, still wouldn't say its the best (they definitely ran more wing than most teams in Bahrain, so definitely some work on the efficiency, that will come with more downforce), but compared to last year where the car had good pace in the corners then lost all its lap time on the straight its certainly a improvement. Jeddah will be interesting, I expect a decent sector 1, the high speed performance is very good on the MCL60, question is how much will they bleed off in sector 3. I'm personally quite optimistic, besides the hairpins and straights I really don't see where else they can lose a large chunk of time.

[Ground Effect]

Why is the car being called draggy?

[bauc]

Why is the car being called draggy?

When a car gets its downforce at the high expense of top seep its called draggy.

Now to clarify, less df will always increase top speed and vice verse, the magic is to create a df package that creates good DF levels but at a little expense of top speed or popularly called ''aero efficiency''

[mwillems]

I'm not sure I'd go so far for as saying bullish, they are still targeting a quite modest 4th fastest car by seasons end, but you can certainly feel the optimism from Mclaren.

But I suppose what happens depends as much whether other teams also can see similar gains ahead, this is something that we or Mclaren can not know. Exciting to see though!

I don't remember the team talking how much potential their development path has. This does seem out of character. Maybe it is just leadership style of Stella?

Totally, they are being very up front but bullish to me suggests they think they can get in the mix, but they are just saying 4th fastest car by seasons end. That's just the progress I expect to see.