2021 Mclaren F1 Team

[Emag]

Long run pace ~2 secs slower than the Merc and 1 sec behind RBR. When do we start to panic?
(just kidding, I think)

They seemed reasonably happy in teamspeak so maybe not yet.

[MrGapes]

Remember that they need to get the car set up with these new updates. Let's see how it goes.

Aslo remember the difference between P3 and Q is quite substantial in every race so far this season and many in last season, so really don't read too much into it, Mclaren have improved much more than most teams after practice and into Qualy.

Just heard Karun Chandhok say on Sky that Mclaren confirmed the updates worked as expected but that setup needs to change to work with the updates - just as you said...

hey hey hey we going to take away my credit hahaha

[MrGapes]

No but guys I saw all the lap times we were on average about 2-3 tenths of Charles on a relatively similar program on Mediums so no need to stress....

[Macklaren]

Summary does not sound too downbeat. Interesting that Daniel thought that FP2 was much better than FP1. I think they panicked when they saw how fast they were this morning and overshot on the sandbagging

https://www.mclaren.com/racing/2021/spa ... -practice/

[SmallSoldier]

Summary does not sound too downbeat. Interesting that Daniel thought that FP2 was much better than FP1. I think they panicked when they saw how fast they were this morning and overshot on the sandbagging

https://www.mclaren.com/racing/2021/spa ... -practice/

The times are also masked by the aero program, with the new front wing and floor probably taking time from performance runs to understand and correlate them.

With engines having to last 8 races this season, it’s no surprise that settings during practice might be on the low side from a power perspective, no need to add additional wear to the engines.

It’s early to make any assessments on the upgrades, they introduced the “Z” notched floor concept, which might take a little bit of time to fully understand and dial in... The team is been very low key in regards to their upgrades so far


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[SmallSoldier]

Interesting article about Daniel’s changes on driving style (specifically about braking and turn in technique) adjustments to extract more out of the MCL35M:

https://the-race.com/formula-1/mclarens ... periments/


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[mwillems]

Remember that they need to get the car set up with these new updates. Let's see how it goes.

Aslo remember the difference between P3 and Q is quite substantial in every race so far this season and many in last season, so really don't read too much into it, Mclaren have improved much more than most teams after practice and into Qualy.

Just heard Karun Chandhok say on Sky that Mclaren confirmed the updates worked as expected but that setup needs to change to work with the updates - just as you said...

Cheers dude

[mwillems]

Remember that they need to get the car set up with these new updates. Let's see how it goes.

Aslo remember the difference between P3 and Q is quite substantial in every race so far this season and many in last season, so really don't read too much into it, Mclaren have improved much more than most teams after practice and into Qualy.

Just heard Karun Chandhok say on Sky that Mclaren confirmed the updates worked as expected but that setup needs to change to work with the updates - just as you said...

hey hey hey we going to take away my credit hahaha

It's a fair point lol

[mwillems]

It's good to see the dissection not be used so much to decide if we are going to have a good weekend or not, people are calming and getting confidence in the team and car now, and realising that the way Mclaren run, the Free Practise sessions are not really holding so much importance.

Either that or everyone is in the pub garden.

[Emag]

It's good to see the dissection not be used so much to decide if we are going to have a good weekend or not, people are calming and getting confidence in the team and car now, and realising that the way Mclaren run, the Free Practise sessions are not really holding so much importance.

Either that or everyone is in the pub garden.

I am not gonna lie, it's always a bit worrying when you see them low on the timesheets on friday. For me personally, it's because I enjoy the sport a lot, but I love McLaren as a team (the first memory of F1 I have is Kimi and Fernando fighting together and I loved the look of the silver-gray car when I was young).

So when you wait two weeks for F1, and you favorite team leaves you "hanging" for one more day before you can properly enjoy the race weekend, it doesn't feel that nice. But in this case, we just had a race last week, so the wait isn't very long, and I can patiently wait for tomorrow before I arrive on any sort of conclusions.

In the case of Imola for example, where I was probably one of the biggest "critics" of their friday performance, we had to wait 3 weeks after Bahrain. It's just so disappointing to wait 3 weeks for F1, and in the first day of the race weekend your favorite team looks "miserable". It kind of puts you off until you know, they almost get pole on saturday

[mwillems]

It's good to see the dissection not be used so much to decide if we are going to have a good weekend or not, people are calming and getting confidence in the team and car now, and realising that the way Mclaren run, the Free Practise sessions are not really holding so much importance.

Either that or everyone is in the pub garden.

I am not gonna lie, it's always a bit worrying when you see them low on the timesheets on friday. For me personally, it's because I enjoy the sport a lot, but I love McLaren as a team (the first memory of F1 I have is Kimi and Fernando fighting together and I loved the look of the silver-gray car when I was young).

So when you wait two weeks for F1, and you favorite team leaves you "hanging" for one more day before you can properly enjoy the race weekend, it doesn't feel that nice. But in this case, we just had a race last week, so the wait isn't very long, and I can patiently wait for tomorrow before I arrive on any sort of conclusions.

In the case of Imola for example, where I was probably one of the biggest "critics" of their friday performance, we had to wait 3 weeks after Bahrain. It's just so disappointing to wait 3 weeks for F1, and in the first day of the race weekend your favorite team looks "miserable". It kind of puts you off until you know, they almost get pole on saturday

Haha yes, Fridays can often just feel like a massive disappointment especially after a long wait!

I just keep tabs on the times now, and catch a few laps on YouTube to see how the car is handling, enjoy some chatter in here and leave it at that. Even FP3 performance seems subdued, last year at least we did turn it on more for FP3. Perhaps they are just being very Conservative with the engines.

Williams were my team originally, but after Hill left I drifted over to Mclaren and always loved their liveries, from the Malboro colours to the silver, they always had an iconic look. Here's hoping Papaya will get its chance to go down in history and win a championship alongside those other iconic cars.

[PhillipM]

The reason the floor and the rear winglets come together is because it needs some working ride height/rake changes - which means dialling the car back in.

[mwillems]

Wow I just looked at the changes, it looks exciting.

New rear break winglets (As correctly called by PhilipM before any pictures became available), new barge board, floor and front wing.

What looks really interesting is Mclarens take on the z cut, which isn't a z cut, but a vortex inducing chicken wing that seems to protude.

Front wing could help in S3 but is unlikely to be the solution.

But now I'm excited.

[SmallSoldier]

I want to think that Mclaren left plenty on the table during practice, hard to imagine that they would be so far behind the midfield in S3, barely faster than Williams and Haas in that sector shouldn’t be actual performance:

Best Times per sector:




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[SmallSoldier]

It's good to see the dissection not be used so much to decide if we are going to have a good weekend or not, people are calming and getting confidence in the team and car now, and realising that the way Mclaren run, the Free Practise sessions are not really holding so much importance.

Either that or everyone is in the pub garden.

I am not gonna lie, it's always a bit worrying when you see them low on the timesheets on friday. For me personally, it's because I enjoy the sport a lot, but I love McLaren as a team (the first memory of F1 I have is Kimi and Fernando fighting together and I loved the look of the silver-gray car when I was young).

So when you wait two weeks for F1, and you favorite team leaves you "hanging" for one more day before you can properly enjoy the race weekend, it doesn't feel that nice. But in this case, we just had a race last week, so the wait isn't very long, and I can patiently wait for tomorrow before I arrive on any sort of conclusions.

In the case of Imola for example, where I was probably one of the biggest "critics" of their friday performance, we had to wait 3 weeks after Bahrain. It's just so disappointing to wait 3 weeks for F1, and in the first day of the race weekend your favorite team looks "miserable". It kind of puts you off until you know, they almost get pole on saturday

I guess that we all need to remember what practice is for, ultimately it isn’t about lap time, but understanding of the car... Times will always be deceiving, since without knowing fuel loads and engine modes is very hard to make an actual analysis... Probably the best we can do is look at some of the on boards and car shots while on track and look at any potential issues (like a lot of steering corrections, understeer or rear instability)... If the car looks planted and balanced, that most probably will translate into speed when it matters.

I might be the other way around, I remember practice sessions where the team was close to the top and when it counted, they fell behind massively compared to the expectations on Friday... The shock when a good practice time didn’t translate into qualifying or the race was harder to manage for me.

There are a few things to also consider when we look at this lap times during practice (specifically Qualy sims) and that is in regards to the tires, if by during practice the team doesn’t have the tires in the right operating window, it will have a big effect.

Let’s hope the trend continues with the team making a big jump towards Qualy!


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