2025 McLaren F1 Team

[Watto]

sorry... they should check all the cars not just few random cars... It seems repeating of 2021 Abu Dhabi in 2025. They are trying to make sport interesting with some manipulation. something will happen in next race to make more interesting artificially..... I don't even surprise by end of next race Max = Noris in Point..... We will see..... in 7 days...

To check every car for every single compliance would take far too long especially back to back races go through al the things that can be and are checked. Max's car was checked for the plank ware and it seems the top 10 all where only the 2 McLarens failed the test.


Yeah 2020 AD was dodgy but this is a clear breach and solely on McLaren

I agree. But perhaps it could be that if 1 or more cars are DSQ for something like plank wear or skid block wear etc, then they should check that specific thing on all cars.

They did check the top 10 for skid block wear that was the entire top 10 all the point scoring positions. I think that is a pretty fair 6 different teams only 1 failed the test.Outside the points its harder to justify.

[Watto]

Hopefully this thread retains sanity, 24 points is still a big gap going into the last two races.

My bad. I should have known better.
Hoping that atleast by thursday/Friday before next weekend, this team thread comes back to normal.
Right now there is too much copium/UFO-spotting/venting going on.

A lot of people are pissed off at the outcome and are trying to justify it with whatever means floats their boats. The gist of the matter is that they f*cked up and ran the car too low. Whether they were picked at random or there's some great conspiracy targeting McLaren doesn't really make a difference.

To be fair too I think most McLaren fans accept the team stuffed up. A bit of a vocal minority though making a lot of noise

[Henk_v]

Good. Clear breach and the correct punishment applied. Now remains to be seen how the pace will be affected in the last two races.

I immediately thought this as well, this happening after the "heating devices" directive, they could very well be nowhere the last couple of races.

0.12mm under. Don’t think they’ll be nowhere in the last couple of races.

You are framing this wrong. 0,12mm is 12% over the limit. A double digit f#ckup in a single digit sport.
Next weekend is a sprint weekend, with 2 races and 2 qualifying sessions to be done with one set of plank and skidplates. If MCL is not able to predict their wear, they might need to be overly cautious.

[hollus]

I find it interesting that it was in both cars, by similar amounts and in both cases involving far apart parts of the plank. So clearly a setup error, or mor like a setup decision error, and not a screw left a bit too tight somewhere.
Some people noticed the scraping, I noticed really hard head bouncing at some point. So I buy the porpoising story.

[chrisc90]

Today the cars were pretty low, I didn’t think Oscars pace was anything spectacular. Struggling to pass Kimi on a set of tyres with half a race on them at least

[Avocado]

It's like waking up from a nightmare. The team needs to stay focused on finishing things in Qatar. Enough is enough.

[AR3-GP]

0.12mm under. Don’t think they’ll be nowhere in the last couple of races.

0.12mm under doesn't mean the car was simply "0.12mm too low". The correlation is not 1:1. It could equal to a millimeter or more of extra ground clearance required to prevent that excess wear, which would have caused a downforce loss. Mclaren are having to run their car at its limits (lower and lower) to extract that extra bit of performance as the others got closer. Perhaps some other rumors have also impacted them...

Piastri hinted as much:

"Disappointing to come away from this weekend with no points after an unfortunate disqualification due to skid wear.With how close the grid is, we’re always looking at where we can gain performance, and we didn’t get it right this time.

I thought it was strange how competitive Mclaren was this weekend. It turns out that they were running at what is effectively an illegal ride height. False speed in qualifying and false speed in the race.

[CjC]

0.12mm under. Don’t think they’ll be nowhere in the last couple of races.

0.12mm under doesn't mean the car was simply "0.12mm too low". The correlation is not 1:1. It could equal to a millimeter or more of extra ground clearance required to prevent that excess wear, which would have caused a downforce loss. Mclaren are having to run their car at its limits (lower and lower) to extract that extra bit of performance as the others got closer. Perhaps some other rumors have also impacted them...

Piastri hinted as much:

"Disappointing to come away from this weekend with no points after an unfortunate disqualification due to skid wear.With how close the grid is, we’re always looking at where we can gain performance, and we didn’t get it right this time.

I thought it was strange how competitive Mclaren was this weekend. It turns out that they were running at what is effectively an illegal ride height. False speed in qualifying and false speed in the race.

Yea, McLarens competitiveness for this weekend can be thrown out of the window, the same as I have always regarded a team when disqualified from an event.

The 0.12mm I referred to was the excessive wear, not the amount needed to lift the car.
The clown that I am, have no idea if they needed to raise the ride height by 1mm or 3 meters to make it legal.

[MrGooch]

I find the steward's document pretty confusing.

It states pretty clearly in the 'fact' summary that the infringement is for wear of the plank, then the rest of the document refers to wear of the skids? As far as I am aware there is no provision for checking the thickness of the skid blocks for wear, it is the plank which has defined measuring points.

Additionally, the technical delegate's report issued earlier specifically called out 3.5.9e which only refers to plank wear.

And I wrote about this on r/formula1, but I do not think the thermal expansion of the skid blocks is as much a deal as people think. To get even .1mm or a 10% increase in skid block height you would need uniform heating of the skid block equivalent to ~900°C. That just does not seem realistic to me, at least not without some other special tricks that the FIA may have missed.

The fact that the measurements were worse the 2nd time... Yea I bet the technical delegate was a little more careful taking his measurements with 3 Mclaren representatives and a FIA delegate there.

[Henk_v]

The shock is not the amount of wear. It is the fact they did not foresee it. If you can not foresee, you are blind. And they are heading blind into a sprint weekend.

[AR3-GP]

How come Lando Norris was told to slow down in order to manage the plank wear, but Oscar Piastri was not?

[Henk_v]

Piastri was under pressure

[AR3-GP]

Piastri was under pressure

Isn't a couple of points better than zero points? What if Lando Norris had managed to successfully save his plank at the end? Then Oscar Piastri couldn't look at the team the same way again.

It should be pointed out that Oscar Piastri had more plank wear than Lando Norris.

In Norris' case, the left side remained within the allowed. However, the right side showed wear below the minimum. The measurements showed:

Front right: 8.88mm

Right rear: 8.93mm

On the other hand, Piastri had three areas under the limit. Thus, the numbers looked like this:

Front Right: 8.74mm

Right rear: 8.90mm

Front left: 8.96mm

I'd be pissed if I was Piastri and the team tried to save Lando but didn't tell me anything.

[bluechris]

The extra loss of plank happened with both cars behind other cars and that reduce the load, right? If Norris for example had turn 1st in the 1st lap with clean air, how much more the plank would had wear? I mean by saying this, the mistake or not mistake that they did in the car, was bigger in my eyes counting what im thinking.

[AR3-GP]

The extra loss of plank happened with both cars behind other cars and that reduce the load, right? If Norris for example had turn 1st in the 1st lap with clean air, how much more the plank would had wear? I mean by saying this, the mistake or not mistake that they did in the car, was bigger in my eyes counting what im thinking.

You would have more plank wear in the clean air because you get more downforce in clean air.