2025 McLaren F1 Team

[Darth-Piekus]

Opinions about FP1?

[FittingMechanics]

Long run pace looks strong? Maybe not the same run plan as others.

At initial hard fast laps Piastri looked in the mix for the top, Norris was more twitchy. He had a early pitstop and some change, after a few laps he improved.

[Emag]

Sneaky Lando not activating DRS in the rundown to the start/finish line in his soft lap. Lost 2 tenths to Oscar. Unless they went all in with engine modes, that's a very strong lap.

EDIT: Nevermind, not a DRS zone. He lost because he shifted to 8th in the penultimate corner and lost a lot of time out of it. Not enough torque on 8th.

[FittingMechanics]

Sneaky Lando not activating DRS in the rundown to the start/finish line in his soft lap. Lost 2 tenths to Oscar. Unless they went all in with engine modes, that's a very strong lap.

EDIT: Nevermind, not a DRS zone. He lost because he shifted to 8th in the penultimate corner and lost a lot of time out of it. Not enough torque on 8th.

Good catch. He asked the team about that.

NOR → PIT
15:23
Am I meant to be in seventh for the second-to-last corner?

PIT → NOR
15:24
Yes, we think seventh is better. Keep the speed up on the slow lap please.

[FittingMechanics]

Crazy that he is finding out about that at the end of FP1. I would have thought they'd be in the sim before hand.

[SilviuAgo]

Opinions about FP1?

Interesting FP1 (and only ) And with all this "Pirelli rules" will be more interesting.
McLaren looked to have a difficult start. The first runs on hards were way off the pace. Good news through the session they made the right changes to the car and MCL39 looked more stable. At least for Lando who looked to struggle more than Oscar.
On the soft tyre things changed and McLaren was another car. +0.5 vs max is something positive ahead Sprint Quali.

What I am curious about is that "race pace" shown on F1tv, with Oscar pace at 1:23:6 vs max and Lando 1:24:8. Hard to believe Oscar has +1 vs them on race pace.

[SilviuAgo]

Crazy that he is finding out about that at the end of FP1. I would have thought they'd be in the sim before hand.

Also Palmer said when Isack had his quali sim that there are some corners where last year the cars were flat and now they had to back off one gear.
Maybe Lando was expecting the softs or the track evolution to allow him 8th on that corner.
Good to find the answer in practice and not in quali.

[Emag]

Damn, apparently 7th gear in the last couple of corners is way more superior (for McLaren at least). Lost literally 2 tenths just due to less torque out of 15.

[search]

What I am curious about is that "race pace" shown on F1tv, with Oscar pace at 1:23:6 vs max and Lando 1:24:8. Hard to believe Oscar has +1 vs them on race pace.

as often in FP1, McLaren did not pit to add fuel.

[SilviuAgo]

What I am curious about is that "race pace" shown on F1tv, with Oscar pace at 1:23:6 vs max and Lando 1:24:8. Hard to believe Oscar has +1 vs them on race pace.

as often in FP1, McLaren did not pit to add fuel.

Is possible that you are right. Cause Lando was longer in the box than Oscar, to add more fuel and his time to be similar to Verstappen. And Oscar to had other approach.
This weekend will be impacted by the tyres. They start with 2H-4M-6S. One set of hards and one of softs were used in FP.
In Sprint Quali will be M-M-S. At least 1 set of each. In Sprint race probably they will be all on Mediums and I expect that the Sprint race to be on one of the Mediums used for the SQ1 or SQ2.

So.it will be very tight for the main race quali (in terms of softs) and race.

[search]

What I am curious about is that "race pace" shown on F1tv, with Oscar pace at 1:23:6 vs max and Lando 1:24:8. Hard to believe Oscar has +1 vs them on race pace.

as often in FP1, McLaren did not pit to add fuel.

Is possible that you are right. Cause Lando was longer in the box than Oscar, to add more fuel and his time to be similar to Verstappen. And Oscar to had other approach.

it's always like this on sprint weekends. Red Bull did a traditional race run in FP (see below, on from lap 11, probably fully fueled), while McLaren did some more hot laps after setup adjustments (including 4th best time on hards for NOR), before turning some switches into race mode, and suddenly going 2+s slower. Without pitting in between.



Of course, no one of us knows the exact fuel loads, but they are obviously very different.