This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
As an aside… that is 50 new pages in this thread in the last 72 hours. Wow!!!! And, interestingly, most of them before the, you know, race win.
McLaren threads have this strange life of their own, for some reason.
BTW, congrats Lando!
And 90% of those 50 pages is completely worthless trash.
This weekend in particular reading this thread was like watching preschoolers playing football, everyone mindlessly chasing the ball without thinking 5 seconds ahead.
Oh well, at least the race result was great and the car is looking good. Hopefully the performance can be translated to future races as well.
As an aside… that is 50 new pages in this thread in the last 72 hours. Wow!!!! And, interestingly, most of them before the, you know, race win.
McLaren threads have this strange life of their own, for some reason.
BTW, congrats Lando!
Just wait for Lando's first World Championship with McLaren. There will be a forum inside McLaren forum based how many pages there will be
If this is true then the assumptions that Lando only got part of the ‘Imola’ update in Miami were correct. (I have no idea if more updates will arrive in Imola apart from Oscar getting the full package Lando ran in Miami).
I was just about to ask here if somebody would have a photo of the sign. Thanks a lot for posting.
It is a tradition I am quite keen on for some reason. Just switching the background light to Papaya orange for a day after a victory for me is a really humble and classy way of 'celebrating' a victory. A way that suits todays team and our drivers.
If this is true then the assumptions that Lando only got part of the ‘Imola’ update in Miami were correct. (I have no idea if more updates will arrive in Imola apart from Oscar getting the full package Lando ran in Miami).
I find it hard to believe they can deliver back to back large packages like this on the budget cap. These aren't small tweaks.
I don't think there will be anything more in Imola.
As an aside… that is 50 new pages in this thread in the last 72 hours. Wow!!!! And, interestingly, most of them before the, you know, race win.
McLaren threads have this strange life of their own, for some reason.
BTW, congrats Lando!
This is the teams' pecking order when, instead, only each team's quicker driver is considered:
1)McL (NOR)
2)RBR (VER) +0.07s/lap
3)Ferrari (LEC) +0.11s/lap
4)Merc (HAM) + 0.61s/lap
5)RacingBulls (TSU) +0.93s/lap
And just a quick reminder what difference 1 year can make, in 2023 McLaren was the slowest car in Miami (second graph below):
If this is true then the assumptions that Lando only got part of the ‘Imola’ update in Miami were correct. (I have no idea if more updates will arrive in Imola apart from Oscar getting the full package Lando ran in Miami).
I think when Stella says "Coming Rounds" he could well mean in the next 6 to 8 rounds, or sooner. I don't think he will mean Imola. Since they replaces most of the Aero this weekend, I guess there is only the rear wing and the tunnel entrances that weren't replaced and I can't imagine we will be doing anything with the rear wing, it's not been an issue for us.
But it all depends on how they plan to release upgrades in the future, it is possible that they don't all need to be big packages and the upgrades could arrive bit by bit. Having said that, I do recall Stella saying there would be 2 or 3 major upgrades this year.
After watching the race three times, I came to certain conclusions. The car was not bad in qualifying, it definitely reduced the gap, maybe 0.2-0.3 seconds. In the race, it is much more difficult to determine the increase, since McLaren was optimally in the operating range of the chassis settings, and the tires worked perfectly. Looking at Lando's fastest pace in the race on medium tires and how he saved them, so far it turns out that the update actually gave more in the race than in qualifying.
The car was fast almost everywhere. At the restart, Lando made a powerful start already in the first sector, which once again confirms that in qualifying on soft tires he simply did not attack strongly, for fear of overheating them.
Knowing how fast McLaren was in Jeddah's first sector of the race, I expected the same here in Miami in the first sector. Yes, there are different temperatures here, a different asphalt surface. But the geometry and cornering are comparable, and McLaren is super fast there. The race confirmed this on medium and hard tires.
But I didn’t expect that we would have problems on hard tyres. Simply because they operate in an optimal temperature range. I saw in the comments above that the increase was 0.4 seconds per lap. To be honest, I don't know if this is true. But at least this is what I personally wanted from the updates.
Sergio Perez wore out his tires faster and could not maintain Oscar's pace in the first part of the race, but Lando was able to save and continue to attack several laps of Checo himself, without overheating his tires, and then show the true potential of the chassis in clean air. The upgrades seem to be working well, allowing you to attack without killing the tires. This is great!
It feels like the team got a silver bullet. The chassis already feels great in slow and medium speed corners. If we expect the next updates for Silverstone, where there will be a package for slow corners, then I think McLaren will be able to fight in the top ranks on a stable basis.
I haven't watched the race onboard yet, but I'll try to in the next few days, comparing the balance of Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren cars entering slow corners and traction out of corners.
I also have two questions. The impression is that a beam wing of the previous specification was installed on Lando’s car, which could affect the efficiency of the DRS and the maximum speed in particular. This is what it looks like from TV cameras. After Oscar's collision with Carlos, at the pit stop Oscar was fitted with a front wing of the previous specification. What does it mean? Is this possible in racing? Or is this possible when there are no spare parts of the same specification?
