2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[BMMR61]

Piastri upheld our honour today, great drive! I can't help thinking 'what if Norris finished the race and Piastri was not screwed by Hamilton'? Would have been another good one for us I beleive. Not Brazil good, but good.

Yep, Oscar did everything and more to make Vegas GP a good watch for McLaren fans. On a night of so many passing moves it was inevitable we would only see a few of Oscar’s, what we did see confirmed his credentials as a fast AND accurate racer. Maybe the conditions didn’t provide the opportunity to show his evolution in tyre management but it sure seemed like he was managing the hards in spite of less than ideal circumstances. The last few weeks have not shown Oscar at his best but I personally think Vegas was up there with some of his best drives. It was impressive the way he clung to CL and Checo in third after the team left him out after the second SC, though inevitably he faded on older rubber. Seemingly always on an offset - out of sync - it denied us the chance to see how close to the pace of the podium guys, Oscar was tonight. It was one of the best recovery drives of 2023 despite bad timing of key events on the night masking how good it really was. Best wishes to Lando after a pretty scarey crash.

I think on more familiar ground - Abu Dhabi - and a track many pundits predicted would be better than the four preceding tracks for McLaren, fans can reasonably hope for more podiums to come McLaren’s way. Let’s hope Lando is fully recovered and not detuned by his freak crash last night, and Oscar continues to show his progress as a top F1 pilot.

[Mostlyeels]

Yep, Oscar did everything and more to make Vegas GP a good watch for McLaren fans. On a night of so many passing moves it was inevitable we would only see a few of Oscar’s, what we did see confirmed his credentials as a fast AND accurate racer.

Yep, some very tasty overtakes from Oscar.

[kptaylor]

Dumb question, but I can't remember. What would the penalty have been if Oscar didn't pit and ran his second set of hards for the rest of the race? (Penalty for not taking two different compounds during the race.)

[AR3-GP]

Dumb question, but I can't remember. What would the penalty have been if Oscar didn't pit and ran his second set of hards for the rest of the race? (Penalty for not taking two different compounds during the race.)

DSQ

[f1rules]

i can understand he was a little shaken, not a place where you expect to loose it

[basti313]

Yep, Oscar did everything and more to make Vegas GP a good watch for McLaren fans. On a night of so many passing moves it was inevitable we would only see a few of Oscar’s, what we did see confirmed his credentials as a fast AND accurate racer.

Yep, some very tasty overtakes from Oscar.

Well...mostly helped by some few laps newer tires.
Still I do not get why they screwed up the strategy like this. They should not have put on Hards at the SC and even if, use them and change to the Mediums much earlier. They were just cruising around on this second set of Hards with knowing they need to stop again...

[Seerix]

Yep, Oscar did everything and more to make Vegas GP a good watch for McLaren fans. On a night of so many passing moves it was inevitable we would only see a few of Oscar’s, what we did see confirmed his credentials as a fast AND accurate racer.

Yep, some very tasty overtakes from Oscar.

Well...mostly helped by some few laps newer tires.
Still I do not get why they screwed up the strategy like this. They should not have put on Hards at the SC and even if, use them and change to the Mediums much earlier. They were just cruising around on this second set of Hards with knowing they need to stop again...

they did not change tyres under SC, Oscar had puncture from Ham contact

[basti313]

Yep, some very tasty overtakes from Oscar.

Well...mostly helped by some few laps newer tires.
Still I do not get why they screwed up the strategy like this. They should not have put on Hards at the SC and even if, use them and change to the Mediums much earlier. They were just cruising around on this second set of Hards with knowing they need to stop again...

they did not change tyres under SC, Oscar had puncture from Ham contact

Thanks, I missed this. Still makes it even worse hanging it out on the used Hard. Explaines where there was no pace at all after the SC.

[mwillems]

Yep, Oscar did everything and more to make Vegas GP a good watch for McLaren fans. On a night of so many passing moves it was inevitable we would only see a few of Oscar’s, what we did see confirmed his credentials as a fast AND accurate racer.

Yep, some very tasty overtakes from Oscar.

Well...mostly helped by some few laps newer tires.
Still I do not get why they screwed up the strategy like this. They should not have put on Hards at the SC and even if, use them and change to the Mediums much earlier. They were just cruising around on this second set of Hards with knowing they need to stop again...

I think Oscars drive was brilliant. The car was porpoising all weekend and struggling in Q. Even though the car came to us in the race, you look at what he did in the race and it was quite magnificent I thought.

Re: Hards... they didn't put them on at the SC, they had a puncture and were forced into the change. The SC then came and shafted ruined any chance of a high placing finish. But the strategy was OK.

Even Stella said the pace surprised the team in the race so you have to credit Oscar for what he did.

https://www.speedcafe.com/2023/11/20/mc ... las-vegas/

“Just a massive shame because Oscar was absolutely brilliant.

“We were expecting the car to… I think I said that certainly [being] eliminated in Q1 wasn’t our position because we knew we had improved the car from practice.

“But somehow, today was a bit of a surprise as to how quick we were.

“So it’s a shame that, because we had started the race on hard tyres, then we needed to pit before the due time because of the contact with Hamilton.

[organic]

My observations:

McLaren's good races have mostly been at circuits with excellent/smooth track surfaces.

Brazil, Qatar, Suzuka, Silverstone, Hungary. smooth almost perfect track surfaces

COTA and Vegas exposed the weakness they currently have with the ride that is struggling with handling uneven and bumpy surface, especially under braking. A bump also even caused Lando's dnf this weekend

Where things are bumpy Ferrari step forward and McLaren step backward

[willmesquita]

My observations:

McLaren's good races have mostly been at circuits with excellent/smooth track surfaces.

Brazil, Qatar, Suzuka, Silverstone, Hungary. smooth almost perfect track surfaces

COTA and Vegas exposed the weakness they currently have with the ride that is struggling with handling uneven and bumpy surface, especially under braking. A bump also even caused Lando's dnf this weekend

Where things are bumpy Ferrari step forward and McLaren step backward

Interlagos is not a smooth track...

[mwillems]

My observations:

McLaren's good races have mostly been at circuits with excellent/smooth track surfaces.

Brazil, Qatar, Suzuka, Silverstone, Hungary. smooth almost perfect track surfaces

COTA and Vegas exposed the weakness they currently have with the ride that is struggling with handling uneven and bumpy surface, especially under braking. A bump also even caused Lando's dnf this weekend

Where things are bumpy Ferrari step forward and McLaren step backward

There is something similar to the RB quandary in that the ride height and the stiffness we need to run our setup in determines how good a weekend we can have. And I'd imagine the issues the team were having this weekend was finding a setup that could go fast and deal with the bumps. This obviously didn't go as well as we'd like in Lando's case as it is hard to suggest with conviction that the setup had nothing to do with this. It's not a coincidence though that the tracks that challenge us a bit more are largely the same as RBs.

But we finished 4 in Q at Singapore, a bumpy track where we did well in Q and R.
2nd in Q at COTA where we also finished 2.
We were extremely quick in Q at Interlagos.

So I think there's something else that alters whether the cars perform well or not, more than just bumps.

I suppose at all the tracks where you could see the car have to work a bit more there were bumps but the package was not low DF. Here, it was the low DF package with which we also went backwards at Monza. So is it more to do with the fact the cars need to run low and with a stuff suspension means it does not like low DF situations. Which in this case, was the whole race. Even then the car came back to us in the race and we've noticed at all the tracks that we have struggled at post updates, the struggles are largely confined to the race.

Monza was actually the worst of all of the tracks for us, and if I recall there were bumps and kerbs here that also demanded a higher ride height?

I keep pondering how we can get the tyres to work in Q vs R and whether this is also part of it.

[billamend]

McLaren will be _very_ strong next week.

[organic]

My observations:

McLaren's good races have mostly been at circuits with excellent/smooth track surfaces.

Brazil, Qatar, Suzuka, Silverstone, Hungary. smooth almost perfect track surfaces

COTA and Vegas exposed the weakness they currently have with the ride that is struggling with handling uneven and bumpy surface, especially under braking. A bump also even caused Lando's dnf this weekend

Where things are bumpy Ferrari step forward and McLaren step backward

There is something similar to the RB quandary in that the ride height and the stiffness we need to run our setup in determines how good a weekend we can have. And I'd imagine the issues the team were having this weekend was finding a setup that could go fast and deal with the bumps. This obviously didn't go as well as we'd like in Lando's case as it is hard to suggest with conviction that the setup had nothing to do with this. It's not a coincidence though that the tracks that challenge us a bit more are largely the same as RBs.

But we finished 4 in Q at Singapore, a bumpy track where we did well in Q and R.
2nd in Q at COTA where we also finished 2.
We were extremely quick in Q at Interlagos.

So I think there's something else that alters whether the cars perform well or not, more than just bumps.

I suppose at all the tracks where you could see the car have to work a bit more there were bumps but the package was not low DF. Here, it was the low DF package with which we also went backwards at Monza. So is it more to do with the fact the cars need to run low and with a stuff suspension means it does not like low DF situations. Which in this case, was the whole race. Even then the car came back to us in the race and we've noticed at all the tracks that we have struggled at post updates, the struggles are largely confined to the race.

Monza was actually the worst of all of the tracks for us, and if I recall there were bumps and kerbs here that also demanded a higher ride height?

I keep pondering how we can get the tyres to work in Q vs R and whether this is also part of it.

I'm sure there's a lot more than just bumps. Ferrari don't perform well in high speed corners and they prefer lower temps for their tyres. Merc do well where the downforce levels are higher (except for Brazil lol). But we've seen RB struggle previously at bumpier circuits and McLaren seem to have gone down a similar development path (shaped tunnel roof with low throat height, stiffer & low ride height) and it seems to have resulted in the same or a similar characteristic so it shouldn't be hugely surprising

This year Singapore wasn't that bumpy as they'd resurfaced much of the bumpy sections of the track.. that was part of the problem for RB who were expecting something far bumpier and just didn't nail the setup with the unexpected conditions. But I could be misinterpreting comments - could be it was just less bumpy than expected (but still bumpy).

At COTA we can extrapolate Charles' race based on a decent (not even optimal) strategy and he'd have finished ahead of Lando. Lewis' strategy was pretty poor and he finished significantly ahead there. Of course both cars ended up being illegal (marginal in at least Ferrari's case) and from that we should perhaps conclude that McLaren left more margin on the table. But I think we could say it was still a large swing compared to races before and after it - at smoother circuits where Macca don't have issues with bumps they're clear 2nd fastest or competitive with RB. At COTA it was at best level with Merc/Ferrari and at Vegas at best level 3rd with Merc

[kptaylor]

McLaren will be _very_ strong next week.TM

There you go!