2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

[mwillems]

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mark ... s-fingers/

Mark Hughes discussing the overheating tyres.

[FittingMechanics]

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mark ... s-fingers/

Mark Hughes discussing the overheating tyres.

How compromised that lap in SQ3 was is illustrated by the simple fact that in SQ2, third sector was the worst one for Lando and in SQ3 that was his best sector (and fastest of all).

Without mistakes in S1 he would have easily taken pole with a large margin.

[AMG.Tzan]

Wow

This is starting to look like the McLaren of the good old days back in 2007-2012 when they were always bringing big updates that always worked and brought a big step forwards! Nice from McLaren although Norris pretty much destroyed his own chances with that first sector!

Hopefully Qualifying can go better for them because starting from 9th in the Sprint won’t get you anywhere near the podium…

[LionsHeart]

Just finally got to watch the replay. Enormous hats off to the team for bringing 1.5 very significant upgrades ("B spec"?) and nailing until.....

My thoughts 10 minutes after it was all over were the tyre preparation was too conservative and the tyres didn't find the window till a number of corners into the lap. This view was supported by sector times but.... it appears to be contradicted by the team and Mark Hughes (in whom I trust). My reasoning was, Lando's turns 1 and 2 were navigated without any grip and his final sector was purple. Usually an overheated tyre on a qualy lap doesn't come back, it goes away. Also Max said afterwards the C4 didn't feel any quicker than the C3 prompting me to think at turn 1 he went in hot expecting to feel the grip and it just wasn't there and he ran wide. Then as the lap progressed it seemed like the tyres came back to him. I and others here appear to have backed the wrong theory.

So for now my views are numerous. This is why Sprint weekends are bad for major upgrades. If there was time to do two runs, what tyre allocations gave rise to nobody doing a second set of C4s? If Lando killed them in Q2 on the mediums with a lap quicker than the pole time, Mclaren are looking good to develop this iteration of the car to be able to compete at or near the front. RedBull struggled in the track time available to get their car to Max's liking, yet up to that final run with a fundamentally very different spec car, McLaren actually came fairly close to aceing it!

I have been trying not to get too optimistic coming into this much anticipated weekend but this car is looking like a beast. The DRS performance graphically illustrated earlier in this forum put McLaren at the front of straight-line performance which is handy in attack and defence. As Lando would say "Let's Go!!!"

This confused me too. But after looking at the onboard, listening to Lando’s comments, and taking into account the asphalt temperature of actually 50 degrees, we can safely imagine that it was not the tire itself that was overheated, but only the working surface. Further along the lap, the tires could only recover if the main frame was not initially overheated. That's why I argued for so long yesterday.

Moreover, the soft C4 tires simply did not suit the specific conditions. Unfortunately, but at the same time I’m glad that the car turned out to be very fast and I hope that it knows how to take care of the tires at a distance.

Before the start of the weekend, I wrote that I was counting on 3 tens in the qualifying, 4 tens in the race, because I want it that way, because the real increase will be less. But the team, in fact, a year later surprises me again and has again improved more than I expected.

[LionsHeart]

I think we have to be quite happy with the upgrades. The car looked great in SQ1 and SQ2 on a track that isn't suited to McLaren. We can also be "happy" that Norris made his mistake in SQ3 and not in Q3. Hopefully he can nail it in Q3.

DRS seems to work great (finally).
Norris said that the upgrades are working, he just made a mistake in SQ3.
Stella was saying before the FP1 that they are expecting "slightly less" laptime than the upgrade in Austria 2023, so I think that the 4 tenths we extrapolated from the comments is correct. We will see how it shows on track and what type of development pace Red Bull has. In the same interview, Stella said that he expects McLaren will need a couple more upgrades like this to catch Red Bull.

All in all - amazing work by the team. The development pace looks amazing and I think we can hope (expect) to fight for wins this year.

This is what F1.com thinks (take it with plenty of grains of salt but nice to see). This chart seems to suggest McLaren would be 1-2 if the full upgrade was on Piastris car.
https://media.formula1.com/image/upload ... al%20Quali

Also looks like we were slightly faster than Red Bull on the straights.
https://media.formula1.com/image/upload ... mance%20SQ

Thank you very much for such data! Hurray! Now we have a fast car! And it seems like we managed to do it without Newey.

[LionsHeart]

Wow

This is starting to look like the McLaren of the good old days back in 2007-2012 when they were always bringing big updates that always worked and brought a big step forwards! Nice from McLaren although Norris pretty much destroyed his own chances with that first sector!

Hopefully Qualifying can go better for them because starting from 9th in the Sprint won’t get you anywhere near the podium…

Remember how quickly Max broke through two weeks ago. Now the car is fast on the straights. If the DRS train does not interfere much, then the Medium tires from Lando will clear the peleton simply by sheer speed.

[Dunlay]

How many times Lando is going to crack in Q3s? He clearly doesn't put together a solid qualifying when the car is there to grab the glory. He is great race driver, but losing precious qualifying spots isn't going to help.

[Mcl_G10]

Sq3 aside, this car is now a monster.

[Ben1980]

How many times Lando is going to crack in Q3s? He clearly doesn't put together a solid qualifying when the car is there to grab the glory. He is great race driver, but losing precious qualifying spots isn't going to help.

I get that Lando has messed up his final run, with genuine mistakes.

But I think the team is taking this one on, and admitting they got the soft tyre warm up wrong. With how the car looked I'm not sure he was getting pole, and that wasn't on him.

[geogate]

that wasnt cracking, that was messing up with limited data. Its only a sprint for goodness sakes, its not like lando would do much more than shrug and say, nice - even if he wins it.

[CjC]

I think top speed is the most encouraging thing from this upgrade. 341kph I’ve seen for Norris. 337kph for Piastri.
They also said the Mclaren is running quite a loaded rear wing too

[eurwynf1]

I'm excited for the race, we finally have a DRS benefit to pass people, could be a belter to watch

[eurwynf1]

The other thing I noticed off board camera the front end seemed solid and predictable in sq1 and 2. This update has been heavily played down

[CjC]

The other thing I noticed off board camera the front end seemed solid and predictable in sq1 and 2. This update has been heavily played down

Yea I think Stella was playing it down in case it didn’t perform but as soon as they saw the validation in FP1 Zak loaded the ‘b-spec’ comment and fired it at the first opportunity

[CjC]

Word of caution though, no doubt Red Bull and especially Ferrari will bring an upgrade to Imola so McLaren could get bumped down to 3rd quickest next race.
We need to see a result this weekend, I think that’s why it’s so disappointing that they fell at the first hurdle yesterday