2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[LionsHeart]

I completely agree here, if the heat is like in Miami, then the problems that Stella spoke about will come up, then, after the most difficult race for us.

[mwillems]

Mwillems, A couple of months ago, I wrote that the team does not have that wild problem at low speeds that they had before, say in 2019-2021. It's true, the chassis does get better at low speeds, but it's clearly visible at low speeds that go fast. In long, slow corners, the problem persists, Stella confirmed in Miami, adding that it is still exacerbated by hot weather. I admit, I read part of your comment diagonally, but this does not negate the fact that Lando changed his driving style based on tire wear. And this is only here, at redbullring, where there was only one practice for setting up an updated aero package. I haven't watched the onboard from Silverstone yet, but I will tomorrow. Lando said that at Silverstone they were very strong in medium speed and fast corners, some of the best. And telemetry generally confirms this. Stella also noted that the speed in slow corners has also become higher, and I'm glad about that. How the Hungaroring will show itself is anyone's guess. Regarding the overall performance, in order to increase the speed, it is required to bring to mind the rear wing, the DRS system. Looking at the qualifying laps of Max and Lando, you can see that where DRS is not activated, they ride about the same and the maximum speeds are comparable.

Which long slow corners have we had since the update? I'm not sure there is anything to challenge this revised car yet in that respect. I'm not disagreeing with the past, it is hard, it is there for all to look at. But this heavily aligned car cannot be assumed to align with past behaviours and I struggle to see how they can reliably predict a behaviour at Hungary. I just see them as a means to benchmark this new car.

It's also important to remember that using a car that was not dissimilar to the one we started this year with we finished 4th at Hungary last year.

[mwillems]

I completely agree here, if the heat is like in Miami, then the problems that Stella spoke about will come up, then, after the most difficult race for us.

You'd think so. Except the car that struggled in Miami was closer to the one that finished 4th in Hungary last year than the one that was appalling at Miami this year. So was that because of the cars traitsor because our car had not moved on much and others had...? Folks keep referring to the traits of the car but it was just all around behind in development more than having a set of bad traits.

This is a track Lando and the Mclaren has done well at despite the fact it has lots of challenges that in peoples minds would/should make us slow, and it doesn't seem to get factored in much that the car at Miami was not really updated much and that car that should have started the season came to us in Austria.

I'm going to duck out of the conversation but will happily pick it back up a week on Saturday/Sunday

[PikeStance]

Interesting conversation, but it seems you are all back where you started; let's see what happens next?
One thing for sure, the car is better, but not good enough yet! Our goal is not to be the best of the rest, but to challenge and surpass Red Bull.

[haza]

Hungary will be a good test to see what tyre deg is like in the hotter conditions I do believe this pace we’ve had over the last couple races is genuine regardless of the track being cooler last week, I see what Norris means about the car in slow speeds it’s not the short slow hairpin like corners of Monaco and Austria that’s the issue it’s the long winding slow corners where the car loses out i do believe the updates being brought to Hungary are mechanical upgrades so fingers crossed this helps that issue

[mwillems]

Interesting conversation, but it seems you are all back where you started; let's see what happens next?
One thing for sure, the car is better, but not good enough yet! Our goal is not to be the best of the rest, but to challenge and surpass Red Bull.

That was always my position, its the point I make each tand every time

[mclaren111]

Interesting conversation, but it seems you are all back where you started; let's see what happens next?
One thing for sure, the car is better, but not good enough yet! Our goal is not to be the best of the rest, but to challenge and surpass Red Bull.

Agreed... But that will not happen this year... Zak's prediction of podiums & possible wins next year and 2025 for RBR chanllenge sounds more realistic IF they keep up with current upward trend...

[mclaren111]

Hungary will be a good test to see what tyre deg is like in the hotter conditions I do believe this pace we’ve had over the last couple races is genuine regardless of the track being cooler last week, I see what Norris means about the car in slow speeds it’s not the short slow hairpin like corners of Monaco and Austria that’s the issue it’s the long winding slow corners where the car loses out i do believe the updates being brought to Hungary are mechanical upgrades so fingers crossed this helps that issue

From what I understood this was an Aero Consistency problem... Am I wrong ?

[M840TR]

Hungary will be a good test to see what tyre deg is like in the hotter conditions I do believe this pace we’ve had over the last couple races is genuine regardless of the track being cooler last week, I see what Norris means about the car in slow speeds it’s not the short slow hairpin like corners of Monaco and Austria that’s the issue it’s the long winding slow corners where the car loses out i do believe the updates being brought to Hungary are mechanical upgrades so fingers crossed this helps that issue

From what I understood this was an Aero Consistency problem... Am I wrong ?

Correct, the Toyota windtunnel can't simulate such yaw conditions properly.

[Juzh]

I'm not sure why folks are stressing abut Hungary. Some of the info also seems to contradict telemetry and the teams own comments. We are not weak in slow corners, we just had less improvement in slow corners, and there was improvement in slow corners. The telemetry bore this out. Vs those around us we consistently held more minimum speed at these corners.

We are weak at the exist of slow corners, mainly due to lack of front mechanical grip and traction at the rear, and we are weak in the slow but twisty corners where you need to change direction multiple times, again due to the same reasons mentioned above. Weak front end leads to understeer, thus the difficulty, so hopefully this has been mitigated with the new upgrades (installed & to be installed in Hungary)

Are we weak on exit and in twisty corners in this configuration or this that a reference to the trait we have had prior to the update?

I confess I didn't look at corner exit at Silverstone but we were certainly not great in twisty sections and we weren't always great at corner exit.... but I always thought the team were suggesting this was down to two things, the conditions (Temps, Track Surface) and the cars ability to run off throttle and not all twisty sections are equal. Lando has confirmed that the off throttle issue is much better now anyway due to the cars new Aero.

All I'm saying is, we don't fully know what is weak on this car yet and the strengths and weaknesses are changeable based on circumstances, so Hungry represents its own challenge.

To my amateur eyes the telemetry below doesn't suggest we struggle in the twist sections, in fact in the final two twisty corners before the straight we are on a par or faster than Mercedes. It doesn't men we are perfect and there isn't work to do, but I'd just not call it weak, we don't have enough evidence yet. Not only that, this new car specification has only been tested in cool conditions and with decent track surfaces. So for me it feels quite unkown.

https://i.ibb.co/HKgpR51/Norris-v-Ham.png

If you have f1tv you can go watch Verstappen's first 4 laps in silverstone and see how much better RB is in low speed, even in dirty air, compared to Norris up front. So low speed is still the defining limitation of mclaren, if they sort it out they'll be a real force. Easier said than done mind you, they're struggling with the same known problem for a long time now.

[MrGapes]

Whilst Hungary is a characterised as a slow-medium speed circuit with long right corners etc. The teams add so much load even the mid corner phases are quite small, hence the historical performances are pretty alright, the MCL60 as did the MCL36 actually produce very good peak downforce so I'm optimistic for Quali. In the race I’d expect us to be at our weakness at heavy fuel, but that will come down as the race goes on... That's why I was quite gutted to not see the soft tyre at the SC pitstop in silverstone.

[mwillems]

We are weak at the exist of slow corners, mainly due to lack of front mechanical grip and traction at the rear, and we are weak in the slow but twisty corners where you need to change direction multiple times, again due to the same reasons mentioned above. Weak front end leads to understeer, thus the difficulty, so hopefully this has been mitigated with the new upgrades (installed & to be installed in Hungary)

Are we weak on exit and in twisty corners in this configuration or this that a reference to the trait we have had prior to the update?

I confess I didn't look at corner exit at Silverstone but we were certainly not great in twisty sections and we weren't always great at corner exit.... but I always thought the team were suggesting this was down to two things, the conditions (Temps, Track Surface) and the cars ability to run off throttle and not all twisty sections are equal. Lando has confirmed that the off throttle issue is much better now anyway due to the cars new Aero.

All I'm saying is, we don't fully know what is weak on this car yet and the strengths and weaknesses are changeable based on circumstances, so Hungry represents its own challenge.

To my amateur eyes the telemetry below doesn't suggest we struggle in the twist sections, in fact in the final two twisty corners before the straight we are on a par or faster than Mercedes. It doesn't men we are perfect and there isn't work to do, but I'd just not call it weak, we don't have enough evidence yet. Not only that, this new car specification has only been tested in cool conditions and with decent track surfaces. So for me it feels quite unkown.

https://i.ibb.co/HKgpR51/Norris-v-Ham.png

If you have f1tv you can go watch Verstappen's first 4 laps in silverstone and see how much better RB is in low speed, even in dirty air, compared to Norris up front. So low speed is still the defining limitation of mclaren, if they sort it out they'll be a real force. Easier said than done mind you, they're struggling with the same known problem for a long time now.

To be clear I'm not saying that in comparison to the RB, but in comparison to where we were. I'm not sure that if you're not as good as RB you are weak, if your better than many in the field, just not the strongest.

The car runs a deficit to RB in many ways and is close in others and we will find out more in time what those are in detail as the team get to learn how to set up and drive the car better and we demonstrate at more races. They inevitably have more to learn about this car which hopefully will bring a small amount of time, including the final 25% of the upgrade that is yet to come.

So I'm not claiming this car is great at low speed corners, I'm just saying give it a little time to see exactly where this car is as we have too limited data at this point and the car is still changing as part of the big upgrade rollout. Things should settle down soon.

[Balalu]

Lando did say that he chose a slightly less downforce configuration, so that could also be a factor in the slow speed stuff.

[MrGapes]

Lando did say that he chose a slightly less downforce configuration, so that could also be a factor in the slow speed stuff.

Yes, this was something else I was going to mention...that rear wing should be the lowest df spec + no gurney... of course excluding the exclusive Monza set.

This is what surprised me the most in terms of overall cornering performance...

[FittingMechanics]

What is there to guess? Take a look at the leftmost graph: tire consumption and pace per medium. Everyone is racing in the same conditions. We see the decline in the pace of McLaren relative to Mercedes and Red Bull. In the second section, the consumption of soft tires by Max is comparable to the consumption of hard tires by Lando, the pace is comparable, the tire consumption is comparable. Max, having a faster car, could not go far. This speaks volumes. Put soft tires on McLaren we would have missed the podium, I'm sure of it.

I'm quite late for this reply but if you look at the data without Perez outliers, the angle of Verstappen line and angle of McLaren line for Mediums is very similar. Mercedes line looks better but you have to take into account that Mercedes had one driver on Mediums at the start and that he fell back into midpack - meaning a lot of his laps have same issue as Perez - being slower than he would be. This makes their line flatter than McLaren line. Same issue that happens with Perez data for Red Bull line.

If you cleaned it all up, I think McLaren tire usage would look similar to Red Bull, although the car is obviously slower than Verstappen (not sure about Perez). Morale of the story - hard to analyze with noisy data.