It is difficult for me to judge why Oscar was inferior the whole weekend, why his pace was worse than Lando's on all three days. Oscar has already spoken about this after the race. I think the team will sort it out. In the race, his pace was inferior to Lando's by the same amount as Oscar was inferior to Lando's best lap in the second practice. This difference is 3 tenths of a second. And this is the only point where Oscar was able to get the closest. On the other days of the session, it was more difficult for him. Perhaps non-optimal settings, balance and other factors. After all, no one provided telemetry where it would be possible to figure out where exactly Oscar was inferior to Lando on Friday and Saturday. Where exactly Oscar is losing time. This could be some kind of answer for us.BMMR61 wrote: ↑24 Jun 2024, 12:34Good observations. Quite how McLaren have kept the pace unlocked by the Miami upgrade, without any really significant upgrades while their opponents have all talked up their upgrades, it's a surprise. It would be normal to expect the Miami upgrades to be better bedded in at Imola the following race but how much optimisation is possible? It seems to point to a very good understanding of the package, as we have shared here before. The Piastri Barcelona situation is the first head scratcher - a conundrum of what happened? I would offer this possible theory - the circuit and variable wind strengths and directions caught a few drivers out, most noticeably Albon who thought his car was broken. Lets hope it was a one off as we need Oscar to be bringing the points and supporting Lando strategically in the coming races.LionsHeart wrote: ↑24 Jun 2024, 11:30Maybe. I am happy with Lando's race pace. All this sets a good mood for future races. And by the way, someone said after qualifying that perhaps Red Bull will have more pace in the race, like, maybe they sacrificed a little pace in qualifying and that's why Max lost to Lando. But the race clearly showed that McLaren is fast both in qualifying and in the race. I remember a couple of past seasons, when Andreas Seidl said that their car was good in the race, but very little pace in qualifying. Then they made updates, adjustments to the settings and after a while the car seemed to become faster in qualifying, but began to lose pace in the race. These are my observations over several seasons. A bright moment was the 2023 season, when the car was fast on one lap, but this was due to the fact that fresh soft tires on one lap completely leveled out the shortcomings of the chassis in slow corners.Emag wrote: ↑24 Jun 2024, 11:08
Also, Lando's first stint is compromised behind George + the extension while everyone else was on newer tires.
First part of the second stint was also somewhat compromised because it took a couple of laps to get through Sainz and both Mercedes.
The car was easily the quickest here. On comparable conditions (both on clean air and on the same tires), Lando had 2-3 tenths on Leclerc, and 1-2 tenths on Max.
Just one package of upgrades allowed McLaren to immediately enter the fight for victories. It may seem strange, but we should be pleased. Engineers, mechanics and other professions where people do quality work bear fruit. And it is nice to see how the updated infrastructure immediately allows for a qualitative step forward. And it is good that in the next two weeks we have two more race weekends. In Austria and Silverstone, the downforce package will be about the same as in Australia, if we remember last season. And this rear wing is very effective for McLaren. So we can expect a continuation of the fight for victories. I hope Ferrari can get into this fight. The high density of results obliges the drivers to give their maximum, because the influence of driving in percentage terms increases sharply.
Regarding your message above about Oscar's overall race pace and his pace relative to Leclerc: he did his job well. And the team, as with Lando, gave him a strategy that allowed him to be faster on the second and third stints. This allowed him to have fresher tires relative to his rivals, to catch up with them and overtake them. Oscar passed both Alpine drivers, which means he did the minimum program. Hoping that Oscar would overtake the Ferrari drivers was quite optimistic, given his overall pace this race weekend. Of course, I expected that he would be able to compete with them. But alas, we have what we have. Nothing critically terrible happened. Oscar brought important points to the constructors' cup and that is useful in the future. I hope that the team will quickly figure out what the reasons were for the lack of pace. It is too early to sound the alarm over one race.