geogate wrote: ↑06 Mar 2026, 15:14
i do think our race pace has never looked like it would worry anyone. Hopefully that will come naturally as they understand the PU, deployment etc. For quali i have no idea, it could be any of the top 4 teams so far as i can see.
In the morning I was looking at the telemetry of some of the laps during the long runs and Oscar was really slow in T1 and out of the last 2 corners. Almost 6 tenths to George in those two sections alone, which was quite suspicious considering no such limitation was visible in the faster runs with the Hards and Softs earlier in the session. It was consistent minimum apex speed loss as well, so nothing going wrong in terms of oversteer/understeer. He was just slow.
Maybe 3 more, at most 4 tenths I could attribute to a less aggressive deployment mapping on Oscar's side because it didn't seem like he was utilizing the battery to the full capacity from what I was noticing. But that still leaves another 4-5 tenths on the table which I cannot explain. And that's assuming the T1 and T13/14 losses were not "real".
So thats why I said earlier, unless they were holding back (either purposefully or because they were testing things), I don't see how McLaren can challenge for the podium.
