2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[LionsHeart]

New racing week. New opportunities.

[CjC]

Not sure it was that much of a delay judging by this. Not sure what Lopez was looking at...

I would have to totally agree with Lando

[mclaren111]

Hi guys,
do you think Monza will be suitable for McLaren?

No... Let's hope they can reduce drag enough for top 10...

[mclaren111]

They had the ability to double stack them in the first rain as Oscar was behind some seconds. It's a pity they screwed up the strategy there but what done is done. Onwards to Monza and see what Low DF set up they bring.

OMG can someone do a count of how many times he's mentioned the strategy mistake??!

Edit: Why don't you put all your complaints in your signature, to save typing them out each time?

[organic]

Hi guys,
do you think Monza will be suitable for McLaren?

On paper seems like one of the tracks that will punish McLaren a lot. Not that they won't be quick, just that others may be quicker. The characteristics do not suit the car - a lot of laptime in slow speed, a lot of laptime in tyre degradation, chicanes, low drag

Even after the update, in the race McLaren seems to struggle in the chicanes, some slow speed corners, and with tyre degradation relative to others. We haven't seen how good their low df package will be as we haven't seen it yet

Ferrari, amr characteristics suit the track. McLaren and Merc will contend for 4th quickest and I would expect mcl to even be behind Merc at Monza unfortunately

[LionsHeart]

Yes, I also believe that it will be a difficult weekend. There is speculation about what kind of rear wing they will bring: last year's for Monza, for Silverstone and Spa this year, but there will be a significantly larger top flap trim, a completely new wing.

Looking at the rear wing of the Red Bull, you can understand that they have more opportunities from the DRS system, as well as more downforce in the corners. This is me looking at last year's Monza.

Maybe the team will decide to fine-tune the wing from Spa, Silverstone, Austria and Canada by making a deep cutout of the upper flap, and will also use a beam wing with low downforce. I'm basing this on the fact that the team will want more cornering grip and braking stability.

This will of course improve the efficiency of the DRS, but the overall top speed will be lower than the rivals and there may be a situation where the rivals easily catch up and overtake on the straights.

Do not judge strictly. It's not Thursday yet and I'm just making assumptions.

[LionsHeart]

I looked at the weather forecast for the weekend. It will be mostly cloudy and warm in Monza. Data from the accuweather website.

There have been a lot of rainy weekends this year. This has never happened in my memory.

[organic]

I looked at the weather forecast for the weekend. It will be mostly cloudy and warm in Monza. Data from the accuweather website.

There have been a lot of rainy weekends this year. This has never happened in my memory.

We've had at least one wet competitive session in every race since Miami. It is a bit strange

[LionsHeart]

I looked at the weather forecast for the weekend. It will be mostly cloudy and warm in Monza. Data from the accuweather website.

There have been a lot of rainy weekends this year. This has never happened in my memory.

We've had at least one wet competitive session in every race since Miami. It is a bit strange

I'm not even talking about races, but in general rain sessions in F1. Moreover, in other racing series there were also many rainy weekends.

[Mansell89]

Have we got a Monza package coming guys or are we a little limited with how much drag we can trim off at the moment?

Imagine we’ll see a very nippy Williams this week given their philosophy this year?

[mwillems]

Hi guys,
do you think Monza will be suitable for McLaren?

On paper seems like one of the tracks that will punish McLaren a lot. Not that they won't be quick, just that others may be quicker. The characteristics do not suit the car - a lot of laptime in slow speed, a lot of laptime in tyre degradation, chicanes, low drag

Even after the update, in the race McLaren seems to struggle in the chicanes, some slow speed corners, and with tyre degradation relative to others. We haven't seen how good their low df package will be as we haven't seen it yet

Ferrari, amr characteristics suit the track. McLaren and Merc will contend for 4th quickest and I would expect mcl to even be behind Merc at Monza unfortunately

We mainly struggle on the slow long corners so the hairpins at Monza I'm hoping will not be too bad for us as they suit exactly how we want to approach them with aggressive rotation.

The straits however are another matter, hopefully they can do another evolution of the wing if not create a low DF wing.

On the new more efficient wing, you'd think it is possible to simply shorten width of the top side elements, as they had been widened to make up a little of the DF that was lost. Not as good as a low DF wing but overall should be 10kph faster than what we ran in the race on Sunday (Based on a conservative estimate given that in FP2 Oscar was 10kph faster than Lando).

[CjC]

Lando’s optimism from Friday night faded fast.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/norri ... /10512867/

Also he’s fearing a bad weekend at Monza

Norris admitted that next weekend’s race at Monza could be tough for the team, with Spa having highlighted the straightline speed weakness of the MCL60.

“I think like Andrea [Stella] said there's been so much focus on trying to get the car we have now, which is the completely correct decision to have done," he said. "So much focus and time spent on creating this, there are some things we're quite far behind on.

“But I'd happily take 80% good races and 20% bad rather than vice versa. We know it, I think we admit it, which is always a good thing. We know we're probably in for a pretty tough race.

“I doubt the weather is going to be as helpful. Maybe it is, but straights are still our weakness at the minute, and we'll see what we can come up with."

[CjC]

Have we got a Monza package coming guys or are we a little limited with how much drag we can trim off at the moment?

Imagine we’ll see a very nippy Williams this week given their philosophy this year?

We could see the red bulls, both Mercs, both Ferraris, both Alpines, Albon and Alonso ahead of the Mclaren at Monza- there aren’t many points available again when you are so far down that list….

[mwillems]

I'm thinking we should be good for two top ten finishes at Monza, I won't be too upset if it isn't as competitive as other races have been.

I'm sure one lap pace will be better and we will then drop back in the race. But one thing we will be able to do, being faster in the corners than most cars and the two long straights both being DRS, we have a chance to utilise the slipstream and the DRS to help us not drop back too much. If everything goes smoothly it might not be too bad. But how often does it go smoothly lol

[CjC]

I'm thinking we should be good for two top ten finishes at Monza, I won't be too upset if it isn't as competitive as other races have been.

I'm sure one lap pace will be better and we will then drop back in the race. But one thing we will be able to do, being faster in the corners than most cars and the two long straights both being DRS, we have a chance to utilise the slipstream and the DRS to help us not drop back too much. If everything goes smoothly it might not be too bad. But how often does it go smoothly lol

Agreed.
As you pointed out- Mclarens struggle to overtake at Zandvoort was due to them being weak following another car in the slow second sector.
As you have also mentioned- Monza is quite different, the corners leading up to the main overtaking point at turn 1 are high speed corners

ALSO, I haven’t heard/ seen much about this but now the fastest 5 teams on the grid are powered by Mercedes do the keyboard warriors still think the Merc is a bag of hit?