2026 McLaren Mastercard F1 Team

[Darth-Piekus]

They are. Mclaren only brought one big upgrade package on Miami. The rest had two of them. Its natural that they could be in front. Our drivers did the best the car allowed them too.

[Mansell89]

We aren’t far away. I can’t help but think looking at our car we’ve got a pretty compliant, strong concept and if they’ve validated the front wing as they hoped, we can should have some good development in pipeline to come.

What’s great to see is how close it was between the front 4 teams for the vast majority of the session.

Gutted to not be second row but congratulations to Merc, Ferrari and Max.

[Darth-Piekus]

Food for thought. Ive been watching a live timing on replay. On that last try Leclerc had a 16.485 and a 46.155 on the first two sectors. Russell had a 16.477 and a 46.044. At most he had one tenth over Leclerc. How did he lifted and able to be more than 2 tenths in front? I don't believe he did and to me it looks like they covered it under the rug to give the championship title some drama considering Antonelli is 4th.

[Seerix]

Food for thought. Ive been watching a live timing on replay. Leclerc had a 16.485 and a 46.155 on the first two sectors. Russell had a 16.477 and a 46.044. At most he had one tenth over Leclerc. How did he lifted and able to be more than 2 tenths in front?

He did it by going fast while also lifting. Food for thought, why don't you check race thread, Merc thread or anywhere online for details about Russel lifting instead of posting about it in this unrelated thread?

[FittingMechanics]

Often times gaps baloon in S3 because a better car keeps their tires in play and gains the advantage at the end of the lap.

Russell clearly lifted and has 2 tenths on everyone. It was their pole.

[Darth-Piekus]

What a huge advantage that might have been without lifting.

[Seerix]

I did not really check data, but it seemed McL cars were kinda on pace in S1/S2 but dropped almost 0.2s in 3rd sector. I noticed that quite a lot in quali and FP3 as well (not sure if it applied for final attempts as well). Perhaps it was the tyres overheating towards the end of the lap.

[Darth-Piekus]

They lost a lot of time also on the last two turns. Norris was 0.004 slower than Leclerc's time on S2 but he lost more than a tenth on S3.

[Watto]

They were talking on Sky they wonder if McLaren are having correlation issues and why they abandoned the Macarena wing.

[FittingMechanics]

They were talking on Sky they wonder if McLaren are having correlation issues and why they abandoned the Macarena wing.

I thought they had hydraulic issues and had to drop the wing test. Is the wing hydraulically actuated?

It wasn't run for a second so it's not correlation.