2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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mwillems
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2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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Team: McLaren F1 Team
Base: McLaren Technology Centre Woking, Surrey, United Kingdom
Team principal(s): Zak Brown (CEO), Andrea Stella (TP)
Technical director(s): Peter Prodromou, David Sanchez, Rob Marshall

Race drivers:
4 Lando Norris
Image
81 Oscar Piastri
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Chassis: MCL38
Engine: Mercedes V6 Turbo
Last edited by mwillems on Mon Jan 08, 2024 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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organic
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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One of the most exciting driver lineups I can remember. Looking forward to seeing Oscar's progress

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mwillems
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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organic wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:13 pm
One of the most exciting driver lineups I can remember. Looking forward to seeing Oscar's progress
Yes, it's time for the tricky follow up season, as it is for all of the team. Maintaining the progress from the previous season into the new season is a significant hurdle as we were discussing on the 2023 thread.
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organic
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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mwillems wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 2:03 pm
organic wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:13 pm
One of the most exciting driver lineups I can remember. Looking forward to seeing Oscar's progress
Yes, it's time for the tricky follow up season, as it is for all of the team. Maintaining the progress from the previous season into the new season is a significant hurdle as we were discussing on the 2023 thread.
I won't say he's lucky that it has happened, but he will benefit significantly from the 2023 tyres being used again in 2024. Pirellis are so sensitive that year to year can require a completely different approach. That seemed to be the case between 2022 and 2023 for instance. It should mean he's more likely to be able to continue where he left off

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BMMR61
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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So a question for Mwillems - our backbone of this McLaren thread. You talk about the longer development time Rd Bull have for the RB20, could you elaborate on what you believe to be the end of development of the RB19? I had seen August as a date for the RB19, I believe that Singapore was the last round of McLaren's upgrades - mid September. So is a raw figure of say 4 weeks really very significant? Would the ongoing optimisation of MCL60, 60B (Austria), 60C (Singapore) through to a quite mature state by Brazil, still providing good data be just as powerful as RB's time and resources spent at the factory with the new aero models and platform? How powerful is the extra wind tunnel time allotted to McLaren?

All these questions are to elicit a realism but also a degree of optimism that the performance gap between the two teams will be significantly narrowed. The high level of optimism expressed by RedBull as contained in your post a few hours ago (RB20 is already mature and they are getting ready to work on RB21) does sound at one instance somewhat of a bluff, but also dangerous thinking that reminds me of Mercedes complacent optimism os a GE era fail. Obviously nothing as serious a fail would likely come from a Newey development of the most dominant car since the 1980s McLaren (proud boast from one whose blood runs orange!) My feelings, while trying to dampen expectations, is that the pursuer(s) has the more advantageous position in general. McLaren also seem to not allowing any stone to not be turned in pursuit of all round team progress, by way of best drivers, personnel, and of course infrastructure, as Zak likes to describe it.

ScottR267
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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Not relevant to the new car, however Tim Goss has left the FIA

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organic
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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BMMR61 wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 3:03 pm
You talk about the longer development time Rd Bull have for the RB20, could you elaborate on what you believe to be the end of development of the RB19? I had seen August as a date for the RB19, I believe that Singapore was the last round of McLaren's upgrades - mid September. So is a raw figure of say 4 weeks really very significant?
Since the question requires some context about the RB19 development I will offer some of my thoughts

Scope of RB and Mclaren's upgrades were different. Last major upgrade of RB was pre-summer break at Hungary. And even Hungary/Baku weren't sweeping/vast but rather they only made changes to sidepod and floor edge wing in each case. The floor body - a critical component of these cars and surely a rich development vein - was only changed once all season @ barcelona which was just diffuser change. Singapore which came months after Hungary changes was just a tweak to the floor edge wing geometry to add a bit more camber.

Mclaren OTOH brought essentially two overhauls. Austria and Singapore. Mwillems recently detailed the extent of the singapore changes

This is number of performance changes made by each team. McLaren at 27 vs RB at 12. It takes all of the declaration documents, removed the "track specific" changes eg rear wing trim, brake duct changes and shows a running total.

Not a precise metric, but neither is the final upgrade date: upgrades can be sitting ready to be brought for months before they are put on the car, especially when you have a dominant car.. For all we know RB could've finalized all of the upgrades we saw to the RB19 before Bahrain. McLaren were in the opposite boat such that they were clearly scrambling to get the Austria update out as soon as possible therefore we can safely assume that the Austria/Singapore packages were going straight from pipeline to production to the track. However McLaren having been ~5th in WCC in July when allocations were decided for the 2nd half of the year and finishing 4th in WCC will still be receiving significantly more WT time than RB so I believe that will undo a significant portion of the headstart

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mwillems
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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organic wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 2:04 pm
mwillems wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 2:03 pm
organic wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 12:13 pm
One of the most exciting driver lineups I can remember. Looking forward to seeing Oscar's progress
Yes, it's time for the tricky follow up season, as it is for all of the team. Maintaining the progress from the previous season into the new season is a significant hurdle as we were discussing on the 2023 thread.
I won't say he's lucky that it has happened, but he will benefit significantly from the 2023 tyres being used again in 2024. Pirellis are so sensitive that year to year can require a completely different approach. That seemed to be the case between 2022 and 2023 for instance. It should mean he's more likely to be able to continue where he left off
He probably is, but should he be lucky that the tyres offer consistency through some seasons? It's a don't get me started question not really for this thread.

That said I think he will still struggle in races in the season but on the other hand, we know the car will come to him due to higher DF and better handling, so I would hope the tyres will be less of an issue for him this year due to the development of the car.
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mwillems
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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organic wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 3:24 pm
BMMR61 wrote:
Mon Jan 08, 2024 3:03 pm
You talk about the longer development time Rd Bull have for the RB20, could you elaborate on what you believe to be the end of development of the RB19? I had seen August as a date for the RB19, I believe that Singapore was the last round of McLaren's upgrades - mid September. So is a raw figure of say 4 weeks really very significant?
Since the question requires some context about the RB19 development I will offer some of my thoughts

Scope of RB and Mclaren's upgrades were different. Last major upgrade of RB was pre-summer break at Hungary. And even Hungary/Baku weren't sweeping/vast but rather they only made changes to sidepod and floor edge wing in each case. The floor body - a critical component of these cars and surely a rich development vein - was only changed once all season @ barcelona which was just diffuser change. Singapore which came months after Hungary changes was just a tweak to the floor edge wing geometry to add a bit more camber.

Mclaren OTOH brought essentially two overhauls. Austria and Singapore. Mwillems recently detailed the extent of the singapore changes

This is number of performance changes made by each team. McLaren at 27 vs RB at 12. It takes all of the declaration documents, removed the "track specific" changes eg rear wing trim, brake duct changes and shows a running total.

Not a precise metric, but neither is the final upgrade date: upgrades can be sitting ready to be brought for months before they are put on the car, especially when you have a dominant car.. For all we know RB could've finalized all of the upgrades we saw to the RB19 before Bahrain. McLaren were in the opposite boat such that they were clearly scrambling to get the Austria update out as soon as possible therefore we can safely assume that the Austria/Singapore packages were going straight from pipeline to production to the track. However McLaren having been ~5th in WCC in July when allocations were decided for the 2nd half of the year and finishing 4th in WCC will still be receiving significantly more WT time than RB so I believe that will undo a significant portion of the headstart
Replying to BMMR61 in addition to your post, Organic.

RB have stated that their focus has already moved to the RB21. How true this is I don't know but Ben Waterhouse, Head of Performance at RB has said they are already beginning to shift the focus progressively towards the RB21 of 2025 (!) and have already begun development of the RB 21 with the RB20 development having started quite early in 2023. The stage they are at now is a stage often reached by May/June in a season.

Quite what the implications are for the the gap between Mclaren and RB we can't know. But you could look at this a few ways. You could be optimistic that their strategy of being able to spend all of '25 developing for the new regs gives us a better shot of a title this or next season as they are spending less time than they could on the 24 and 25 cars. Or you could say they are very happy with the car they have developed and be scared.

But I doubt they would have taken this tack if they didn't find the time they felt they needed to be confident of a championship even if we are close on their heels.

So that's what informs me in my own opinion about where we might be relative to RB next year.

Edit:

It's worth noting that if they have nailed down their development path, discoveries for the 21 will likely be backwards compatible to a degree, as with the MCL38 but possibly to a lesser degree. So they may still develop the 20 even when focused on the 21, or to put it a better way, to a large degree the development of both cars is heavily overlapping.
Last edited by mwillems on Tue Jan 09, 2024 2:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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mwillems
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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I suppose the easiest way to see the benefit of tunnel time was when James Key couldn't test all the different "non vanilla" options that popped up on other cars at the start of theses regs due to Covid restricting our own tunnel time. Granted there were other issues at play that I hope we don't go into now, but this did hinder us. But you'd have to say that with all the tunnel and CFD time in the world, you need the struture, management, skills and the people to take advantage of it and make it count.

So the real question to answer the performance output is what can we extract from the time we are allowed with the team we have developed and this comes back to the note of optimism that I do think this team have nailed down what it takes to succeed in this formula and as a team, so the optimistic view would be that we can continue to extract large portions of time as the season goes on. I would be surprised and disappointed if we aren't challenging for wins by the second half of the year at the latest. But that's just an opinion and counts for nothing. And is probably biased by the fan in me :D
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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This is what I like about Andreea Stella,he was part of the great Ferrari/Schumacher/Brawn/Todt and he identified this as a gap to be filled at Mclaren and he said to Zak,"if we want to win championships we must have a stable leadership where everybody knows their jobs and are good at it, and in order to do that,we need x,y and z people and have the right forward mentality",or something like that 😉

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Darth-Piekus
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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In the meantime I hear rumours of Ferrari hitting the door of Newey again. Should Mclaren give a try to poach him instead or do we have equivalent to him?

agnimclaren
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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no....we have peter pordomou...he is as capable as newey

Ground Effect
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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Darth-Piekus wrote:
Tue Jan 09, 2024 6:55 am
In the meantime I hear rumours of Ferrari hitting the door of Newey again. Should Mclaren give a try to poach him instead or do we have equivalent to him?
Didn't Newey just re-sign? Besides, what position would you give him in McLaren? Granted, he'd be the CTO, but once again bossing Prodromou and Marshall? I'm not sure they'd appreciate that.
Q: (Stefano Mancini – La Stampa) Kimi, will you help Vettel to win his championship this year?
Kimi Raikkonen: I can only drive one car, obviously. 
@2018 Singapore Grand Prix drivers press conference.

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organic
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Re: 2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

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McLAREN RACING AND ALPINESTARS TO SUIT UP TOGETHER FROM 2024 SEASON
https://www.mclaren.com/racing/latest-n ... 24-season/