Emag wrote: ↑13 Mar 2026, 17:58
FittingMechanics wrote: ↑13 Mar 2026, 17:43
Mcl_G10 wrote: ↑13 Mar 2026, 17:41
Im not sure if there has been anything from Stella since qualifying?
It looks to me that mclaren have gone a very long way to get on top of the energy management. I say that because on that graph it reads to me that mclaren have the same total amount of energy that they are deploying but they chose to use it at different times/earlier in the lap and therefore are super clipping much sooner and at a lower top speed on the back straight.
This would suggest and point towards the aerodynamics now being the vast bulk of the .6 deficit?
Anybody see differently?
To me it looks like McLaren missed the "trick" by harvesting a lot in T11 and then had less energy on the back straight. That is majority of losses.
The s2 split is right before T11 braking. So basically they were so close in S2 because they deployed there.
You give up 1 tenth in S2, is it guaranteed that you gain more on the main straight? Possibly, but definitely not the 6 tenths you need to put them even.
It still leaves them lacking about 4 tenths (optimistically) to Mercedes.
Before Russell starts to super clip the gap is 0.108s, at S2 mark it is 0.041s (so this small gap is not because of it).

This visible difference of Russell suddenly slowing down is because Mercedes started to harvest, from the throttle trace by doing super clipping. The gap went from Russell being 1 tenth ahead to 3.5 tenths behind Norris.
This super clip event then allows Russel (and Antonelli) much higher energy usage on the back straight which ends up being much faster. And then they are faster on the back straight, so they brake from higher speed (regenerate more) etc.
It is possible McLaren couldn't do what Mercedes did, maybe Mercedes used less energy on each of the previous corners so had more of a "budget" in T11 and the subsequent straight but with how closely matched the trace is in the rest of the lap I'm not sure that is accurate.
I tried to check free practice to see if this "trick" was visible in FP1 but the data seems to be missing. I was curious if this was something they didn't show until qualifying.
If this type of deployment is faster, we might see McLaren (and rest of Mercedes customers) switch to that for proper qualifying.