2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[mwillems]

Out of curiosity. Are Wind Tunnels gonna be banned from 2026 and onwards? Is it a mistake for Red Bull to start building theirs since they aren't gonna use it at all?

I'm not sure if you are conflating the Aero testing ban on 2026 cars prior to Jan 1 2025 with the idea being mooted to ban Wind Tunnels in their entirety, but in the case of the latter, nothing has been decided as far as I am aware.

[mwillems]

There's barely any rumors coming out from McLaren's development progress though. We got crazy numbers coming out from Mercedes, Ferrari and even Aston Martin to some degree.
Dead silence from McLaren though. Just some "wishes" from Zak on how they would want to start the new year. No tangible number leaks though.

I don't really believe all these rumors, because one said the W15 is going to be 2.5 seconds faster than the W14 ... And that seems a bit of a fairytale. But you know, it's offseason, it would be nice to hear something.

Zak has said that they have had a good winter and are happy with what they have achieved so far.

They haven't gone into any detail but they have uttered the positive words that us fans want to hear.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... 5kbZP.html

“We hope to start the season kind of where we finished off,” Brown told Sky Sports, with McLaren overhauling Aston Martin for fourth place in the constructors’ standings late in the year.

“It’ll be interesting to see where everybody starts [in 2024] but we’re feeling good about our development. I think we learned a lot [from 2023] so I anticipate a much stronger start to ’24 than we had in ’23.”

The final statement is an absolute given, considering the start last year. But the first statement suggests that he thinks that we will have kept up with RB, which would surprise me, but as a welcome surprise for sure.

[Darth-Piekus]

I'm not sure just keeping up with Red Bull should be enough. The team has to be able to take one more step than Red Bull if we want to say that we can get victory or victories or even a chance at a championship. Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston will definately be much better than last year. The team has to learn to set the bar for once and also to prove that a customer team can definately get a championship.

[MCLvamos]

There's barely any rumors coming out from McLaren's development progress though. We got crazy numbers coming out from Mercedes, Ferrari and even Aston Martin to some degree.
Dead silence from McLaren though. Just some "wishes" from Zak on how they would want to start the new year. No tangible number leaks though.

I don't really believe all these rumors, because one said the W15 is going to be 2.5 seconds faster than the W14 ... And that seems a bit of a fairytale. But you know, it's offseason, it would be nice to hear something.

Zak has said that they have had a good winter and are happy with what they have achieved so far.

They haven't gone into any detail but they have uttered the positive words that us fans want to hear.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... 5kbZP.html

“We hope to start the season kind of where we finished off,” Brown told Sky Sports, with McLaren overhauling Aston Martin for fourth place in the constructors’ standings late in the year.

“It’ll be interesting to see where everybody starts [in 2024] but we’re feeling good about our development. I think we learned a lot [from 2023] so I anticipate a much stronger start to ’24 than we had in ’23.”

The final statement is an absolute given, considering the start last year. But the first statement suggests that he thinks that we will have kept up with RB, which would surprise me, but as a welcome surprise for sure.

"Starting off where we finished last year" is the bare minimum imo. This is the year that I think will define if McLaren truly has the potential to kick on and challenge for WCs in the near future. Although Zak is always on the side of managing expectations tbf.

The thing that frustrates me with him is it all seems to be a bit PR careful with him always stressing how we won't have everything perfectly in place until 2025 and so on. I'd just like him to be a bit bolder and confident in his statements more often, but I am nitpicking. He's done a great job on the marketing and recruitment side which is his specialty, and I have full faith in Stella to take us to the top from a technical perspective. We just need to show that we can break that ceiling to fighting for wins consistently, I hope this is the year!

[mwillems]

Given that RB would have put more development time and money into next years car than Mclaren, if we were to come out next year and maintain the gap to RB that we ended the season with, then that would be something worth applauding. I don't disagree that it would be great to actually close it, but in my opinion closing that gap is something that was always going to be very difficult. Suggesting a 2025 date feels very reasonable to me.

[Emag]

I dont think it's reasonable to expect anyone, including McLaren, to beat RedBull this season.

They had such a big advantage last year it wasnt even close. So Zak's comments about starting where they left off (i.e, being the second fastest team after RedBull), it's still a very optimistic statement. Unusually so compared to what we have had coming out of the team in the recent years.

So it does show quite a lot of confidence considering how riled up Mercedes and Ferrari are.

[Arcanum]

Ferrari have been riled up for over a decade. They always find a new and novel way to self sabotage.

Merc, if they’ve finally figured out their issues, are the most likely to close some/most of the gap to Red Bull. Yet I wonder if they need a stable car they can fully learn for a season to enable them to make the incremental/marginal gains to fully close the gap?

As McLaren had a strong car they appeared to understand for the second half of the 2023 season, they are further down the path of incremental/marginal gains than Mercedes. Intuitively, in a stable rule environment, you’d expect it’s easier for McLaren to evolve from an already strong car (with a few known weaknesses) than Mercedes to completely redesign what they have.

Also, McLaren would have benefited greatly from being 6th in the Constructors championship at the 2023 season midpoint, so they will have had a lot more aero hours on the ‘24 car than Mercedes (2nd at the time) and Ferrari (4th at the time).

[Darth-Piekus]

I dont think it's reasonable to expect anyone, including McLaren, to beat RedBull this season.

They had such a big advantage last year it wasnt even close. So Zak's comments about starting where they left off (i.e, being the second fastest team after RedBull), it's still a very optimistic statement. Unusually so compared to what we have had coming out of the team in the recent years.

So it does show quite a lot of confidence considering how riled up Mercedes and Ferrari are.

I don't think it's unreasonable to at least get some wins over them. I'm not saying to get the championship but it will be bad for the sport if the same thing happened like 2023. On the other hand isn't it about time to push as hard as possible to surpass them? After all the new technical team will start affecting every upgrade this year.

[mwillems]

I dont think it's reasonable to expect anyone, including McLaren, to beat RedBull this season.

They had such a big advantage last year it wasnt even close. So Zak's comments about starting where they left off (i.e, being the second fastest team after RedBull), it's still a very optimistic statement. Unusually so compared to what we have had coming out of the team in the recent years.

So it does show quite a lot of confidence considering how riled up Mercedes and Ferrari are.

I don't think it's unreasonable to at least get some wins over them. I'm not saying to get the championship but it will be bad for the sport if the same thing happened like 2023. On the other hand isn't it about time to push as hard as possible to surpass them? After all the new technical team will start affecting every upgrade this year.

They've said all along that they are targeting 2024 for some wins, they haven't gone back on this. In fact the statements suggesting they are developing positively suggests they think that they might be on course.

Everyone knows that RB will have had a longer run at the 2024 car than us and some others. What I believe in and obviously so do Zak and the drivers, is that we have understood this formula and how to extract time, and so the time is only going to keep coming. We will almost certainly start behind RB, but the development war is on. We don't need to finish first in the standings to win the development war, we just need to find more time than them each year.

Win that battle each year and the title will come to us. We did it last year and yes we had an advantage but we found at least a second. If we maintain the gap at the start and find a "smaller" three tenths relative to RB over the season next year then we are a car that is in the hunt for wins when the track favours us. Another 2 tenths and we may well be on a par.

It's that close between us and RB. One good upgrade. But also it is close to the teams behind us so nothing can be taken for granted.

And that is why I have been banging on about all the fine margins that will make the difference between winners or losers, it's close to the point where we can't make afford carless mistakes and we are on the cusp of being great again, and I can't wait for it.

[CjC]

Don’t forget Mclarens AND Red bulls final upgrade for the 2023 season came at Singapore.

[organic]

Don’t forget Mclarens AND Red bulls final upgrade for the 2023 season came at Singapore.

It's factually accurate that the last declared performance upgrades for each team were at Singapore, but it should be obvious that taking just the date of the final upgrade is very misleading if we want to try to find something useful. If we only take the final performance upgrade date we arrive at Ferrari having developed more than anyone (except AT); in reality Ferrari had made among the fewest changes all season of any team

McLaren made a large overhaul for Austria and then a second major upgrade for Singapore. RB had two decent packages the latter of which came before the summer break and the Singapore upgrade was minor. It only modified the floor edge wing by a small amount. Rb's scheduld was similar to other teams like Merc, Alpine and AMR so its roughlt what youd expect - it's probably the program that mclaren woukd have liked to do. Even though the final upgrades came at the same time for each team, the proportion of the work at the factory done on the current car was undoubtedly higher at McLaren far later than most of the teams because their development was essentially staggered by a cycle due to their decisions made in the winter

[BMMR61]

I dont think it's reasonable to expect anyone, including McLaren, to beat RedBull this season.

They had such a big advantage last year it wasnt even close. So Zak's comments about starting where they left off (i.e, being the second fastest team after RedBull), it's still a very optimistic statement. Unusually so compared to what we have had coming out of the team in the recent years.

So it does show quite a lot of confidence considering how riled up Mercedes and Ferrari are.

I don't want to entirely disagree with your post but much is made of Red Bull's dominance. I would suggest that much of this "dominance" was in execution, and Max's execution especially - he was almost flawless, albeit not subjected to much pressure.

If we look at the qualifying component the gap was small, even tiny much of the time. Race pace and tyre exploitation was significantly greater so this presents the greater challenge. If RB wants to continue focussing on race pace ahead of qual then there is a vulnerability there - grab a pole position or even lock out the front row and you put Max under pressure. Get both Lando and Oscar performing where Checo fails to back Max up and you are exploiting another weakness. Look, I don't underestimate the strength of RedBull but for me there has been a lot of hyping about the supposedly insurmountable gap to Red Bull. The points they won by was also about the consistency, and the squabbling for points between the next four teams. At the beginning of 2023 you wouldn't have foreseen how "easily" Max would win by - because the pace difference wasn't out of the ordinary for F1. Pace difference of <0.5% is small and incremental gains can soon swallow this up. Stalled development can come at any time, especially when the pressure goes on. I would think Mercedes are most vulnerable at the moment because they have struggled for correlation, and they are committing to a whole new design - the exact opposite to McLaren who should be best placed of the challengers without even factoring in the changes happening within the team's structure and infrastructure.

[Darth-Piekus]

You never know what can happen. Red Bull could screw this up as it's not the first time Andrian Newey has screwed up a concept and we may be on a surprise seeing our team leading.

[mwillems]

Don’t forget Mclarens AND Red bulls final upgrade for the 2023 season came at Singapore.

It's factually accurate that the last declared performance upgrades for each team were at Singapore, but it should be obvious that taking just the date of the final upgrade is very misleading if we want to try to find something useful. If we only take the final performance upgrade date we arrive at Ferrari having developed more than anyone (except AT); in reality Ferrari had made among the fewest changes all season of any team

McLaren made a large overhaul for Austria and then a second major upgrade for Singapore. RB had two decent packages the latter of which came before the summer break and the Singapore upgrade was minor. It only modified the floor edge wing by a small amount. Rb's scheduld was similar to other teams like Merc, Alpine and AMR so its roughlt what youd expect - it's probably the program that mclaren woukd have liked to do. Even though the final upgrades came at the same time for each team, the proportion of the work at the factory done on the current car was undoubtedly higher at McLaren far later than most of the teams because their development was essentially staggered by a cycle due to their decisions made in the winter

Wasn't the Singapore update bigger than that? I recall the sidepods changing to deal better with air in the lower speed or lower DF configurations. The car also became noticeably quicker in a straight line. I need to go back and look, but that was a biggish upgrade if I recall.

[mwillems]

It was a big update.

https://racingnews365.com/mclaren-surpr ... -singapore

What upgrades have McLaren brought to Singapore?
The upgrades include a revised front wing geometry to provide a gain of aerodynamic load and a reshaped engine cover to improve flow conditioning to the floor.

The floor itself has been fully revised and includes updated fences, floor edge and diffuser shape. Both the floor and the new engine cover will work in conjunction with the new sidepod inlet shape.

The Halo cockpit protection device has also been altered to aid airflow over the rest of the bodywork.

At the rear of the car, the brake duct geometry has changed to work alongside a modified suspension, with the rear toelink shroud also modified.

The rear wing endplate has been altered to increase local load while a beam wing specific to suit the needs of the high-downforce Singapore circuit has been fitted to the MCL60.