McLaren MCL39 Speculation Thread

[Emag]

To be honest for how competitive they were, the MCL38 was a rather boring car to look at compared to the other top teams. I guess it was the tightest around the sidepods? A side-view comparison with Ferrari shows this the best.



Other than that I suppose the suspension setup was also quite aggressive, both in the front and back. The front in particular had this peculiar assembly which hasn't been seen on competitors in recent times.

Craig explained it in a post earlier this season :



Genuinely can't think of other interesting things to mention about the car. The flexing stuff is hardly new and I don't consider it technically impressive. Looking forward to the "brave risk" ideas they mentioned for the 2025 car. Similar things were said about the MCL38 when it launched as well, naming multiple innovations in the car. When the car launched though, there was hardly anything screaming innovation on the surface so who knows what Andrea meant by that. There is a lot we can't see. Would be disappointing if they roll out with a MCL39 that looks largely the same with MCL38 in the flesh, but also not very surprising considering this is going to be the last year for these regulations.

Still, whatever the car has on the inside doesn't really change my point. The MCL38 last year was quite boring to look at.

[DoctorRadio]

To be honest for how competitive they were, the MCL38 was a rather boring car to look at compared to the other top teams. I guess it was the tightest around the sidepods? A side-view comparison with Ferrari shows this the best.

https://i.imgur.com/FJprcfO.png

But Ferrari has a slim airbox courtesy of more sidepod cooling.
I think there is no rocket science in cooling management, the aero shapes we see are just what any team thinks it is better for their aero concept, so I would not waste too much time looking at those; the F1-75 was a tank externally and it was very quick, just as an example.
I’m pretty sure they could go much slimmer if still with the old regs, as cooling and PU layout have been developed at max potential since 2021.

[mclaren111]

McLaren is in a bit of a weird situation when it comes to identifying major improvement points from last year just because they started out so bad in 2023.

That means half the races from 2023 are irrelevant data points because we would be comparing a literal backmarker to a (at worst) top 3-4 car when it wasn't actually the best.

The other remaining races unfortunately have mismatches in terms of weather conditions. Some just because they have vastly different air and track temps, others because of rain and the rest because the races itself were organized on different periods of the year.

One of the closest comparison points to last year was actually Abu Dhabi, the last race of the season.
Weather conditions when the fastest lap in qualifying was set in 2023 and 2024 are both quite similar with negligible differences, even in terms of wind speed :

(2024 top, 2023 bottom)
https://i.imgur.com/H5enP76.png

From that comparison, the most noticeable improvement is at medium-low speed corners. The 2024 car not only is capable of maintaining higher minimum speed through those, but it also "bleeds" less speed on longer corners. In fact, when compared to the rest of the 2024 field, long medium-speed corners is perhaps the one area where McLaren excelled, with performances in Zandvoort (especially with the strong S2 there) being one of the many examples of their advantage.

This is a contrasting comparison with their 2023 car, because those types of corners were their biggest weakness last year after the Austria upgrade transformed the car. They have showed great understanding of their package and the regulations from that point onward, with upgrades that have clearly addressed the weaknesses that were faced on-track.

Although qualifying is a good indicator of overall improvements because you're judging peak pace, I would argue a significant improvement over 2023 for McLaren was their race-pace and how well they could look after the tires, although this trait of the car could not be exploited by Oscar as often as it was by Lando.

Still, if you look at the 2024 season, their tire wear performance in race pace was probably only second to Ferrari, which paid a significant price in quali-pace for that tire wear advantage.

When looking at the race lap-chart between the 2023 and 2024 car at Abu Dhabi, one can very clearly see how much more consistent the 2024 car is throughout the stint, losing very little pace (comparatively) towards the end of the stints. What's somewhat bizarre is that the 2024 car at some cases even displayed "negative degradation" if one can call it that. Basically, the laptimes were getting faster by the end of the stint instead of getting slower.

2023 :
https://i.imgur.com/UrNA9nu.png

2024 :
https://i.imgur.com/bRLHiSe.png

Although McLaren made huge improvements from 2023, there were areas of the car which they did not manage to improve. The biggest of which was drag, or overall straight-line performance. Because a lot of attention was given to rear wing + beam wing configurations throughout 2024, we can assume that downforce efficiency was perhaps vastly improved over 2023 (RW-BW wise), however the overall straight-line speed performance in comparison to the competition was still quite weak.

Since the car also lost some of the high-speed corner advantage in 2024 (which is highly likely to be an accepted compromise for the improved medium-low speed performance), this lack of straight-line performance is perhaps not as simply correlated to high wing levels, but rather a draggy concept.

To sum up, McLaren did an amazing job in 2024 to fix the most damning weaknesses of the 2023 car so quickly, but there is still room for improvement. It seemed like towards the end of 2024, the car was receiving little significant developments, but some post-season articles have hinted towards them holding back certain ideas for 2025.

Development potential aside, the major weakness points that need to be addressed for 2025 (in my opinion) are :

1 - Straightline performance / Drag
2 - Wet weather performance (and actually, in general, improvement in lower temps)
3 - Performance in quick changes of direction

Very good summery...

OMG we lost this,we lost that,that wasn't good enough and yet we won the WCC!!!
Stop embarrassing yourself with these lame analysis!!!

Freedom of Speech **Mod edit***...

[Farnborough]

I felt it was a good summing up of what happened.

Some contributors seem to confuse "critique" with "criticism " when a factual appreciation will headline, to an extent, where improvements can be focused.

Working within a technical sphere, the critique holds significant value if honestly carried out as it prevents the hard lessons slipping away, to ultimately be repeated with potential failure if not fully understood.

It was a good year, understanding how it progressed is important.

[Farnborough]

Thomas Edison. "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

[f1rules]

This year will be the first car fully designed by Marshall, and i have really high hopes/trust in his capabilities. He did magic before. Lets hope he found some for this years car. Like mentioned, Mclaren already stated they took some bold decisions for this years car.


McLaren team principal Andrea Stella praised the significant influence of Rob Marshall, who joined McLaren in 2024 as chief designer after leaving Red Bull, where he was the chief engineering officer. “Rob came with a wealth of experience and knowledge from a technical point of view and with a reputation.” “I have to say that working with him, myself, the other technical directors, the entire technical team if anything, we have been impressed even more than what we expected.” — Stella emphasized Marshall’s expertise in car design and layout, which played a crucial role in McLaren’s 2024 Constructors’ Championship win, their first since 1998. “It is because of these qualities, like the knowledge of how you design a car, especially from a car layout point of view, this is very important for 2025 and for 2026, and we missed this role at McLaren before.” — Stella also highlighted Marshall’s hands-on approach and positive influence on the team environment. “In addition to that, Rob brings fantastic human qualities, he is a very positive person, and everyone enjoys working with him. He is full of energy.” “You can see him in the garage, and very often he’s just playing under the car, on the ground, like everyone appreciates his incredible knowledge and experience.” “But at the same time, he’s hands-on, and sometimes even his head is dirty because it was hands-on with the parts, so that’s something that we missed before, and we are glad that now we have it.”

[f1rules]

I hear what youre saying, and i do partly feel the same. Furtunately though, aggressive looks havent brought anything for many years. It seem Mclaren is a well rounded, well behaving car with most ingredients present. It seem to have the right suspension layout, which other teams maybe need to adopt. The correct sidepod design. They focused a lot on front and rear wings and flexing, which obviously paid off. Now we will know soon if Marshall has thrown in some creative ideas for his Mcl39

To be honest for how competitive they were, the MCL38 was a rather boring car to look at compared to the other top teams. I guess it was the tightest around the sidepods? A side-view comparison with Ferrari shows this the best.

https://i.imgur.com/FJprcfO.png

Other than that I suppose the suspension setup was also quite aggressive, both in the front and back. The front in particular had this peculiar assembly which hasn't been seen on competitors in recent times.

Craig explained it in a post earlier this season :



Genuinely can't think of other interesting things to mention about the car. The flexing stuff is hardly new and I don't consider it technically impressive. Looking forward to the "brave risk" ideas they mentioned for the 2025 car. Similar things were said about the MCL38 when it launched as well, naming multiple innovations in the car. When the car launched though, there was hardly anything screaming innovation on the surface so who knows what Andrea meant by that. There is a lot we can't see. Would be disappointing if they roll out with a MCL39 that looks largely the same with MCL38 in the flesh, but also not very surprising considering this is going to be the last year for these regulations.

Still, whatever the car has on the inside doesn't really change my point. The MCL38 last year was quite boring to look at.

[mwillems]

As I posted at the start. I suspect that the Chassis is ripe for improvement. Perhaps not huge, but enough.
The new wind tunnel will be helping to understand how the platform can better support the aero. Last year some chassis changes were restricted due to the need for crash testing. I expect there is more to be done in terms of suspension geometry and configuration, packaging, weight etc that we just hadn't been able to get into until the new MCL39. This was our first generation of this suspension, I'm sure there are learnings about how to improve it. And of course, Rob Marshall will be able to look at some areas he wasn't able to look at mid season and has had a chance to fully understand the aero requirements, but also to feed into those aero requirements.

It's just a shame that in this formula, even more of the magic is hidden from us.

[CjC]

To be honest for how competitive they were, the MCL38 was a rather boring car to look at compared to the other top teams. I guess it was the tightest around the sidepods? A side-view comparison with Ferrari shows this the best.

https://i.imgur.com/FJprcfO.png

Other than that I suppose the suspension setup was also quite aggressive, both in the front and back. The front in particular had this peculiar assembly which hasn't been seen on competitors in recent times.

Craig explained it in a post earlier this season :



Genuinely can't think of other interesting things to mention about the car. The flexing stuff is hardly new and I don't consider it technically impressive. Looking forward to the "brave risk" ideas they mentioned for the 2025 car. Similar things were said about the MCL38 when it launched as well, naming multiple innovations in the car. When the car launched though, there was hardly anything screaming innovation on the surface so who knows what Andrea meant by that. There is a lot we can't see. Would be disappointing if they roll out with a MCL39 that looks largely the same with MCL38 in the flesh, but also not very surprising considering this is going to be the last year for these regulations.

Still, whatever the car has on the inside doesn't really change my point. The MCL38 last year was quite boring to look at.

Don’t forget that Mclaren launched their car with an overbite side pod along with Red Bull- probably because both were on a similar development path in 2023 with the underbite pod.
The others followed suit with this design… even the admired Ferrari.

I’m the opposite, Mclaren have impressed me with their car design especially considering they where a second a lap off the pace midfield team since 2019.

[Seanspeed]

I genuinely am not comprehending this idea that Ferrari had better tire wear than Mclaren last year in the first place. Ferrari had the occasional Sprint/Sunday race with better tire wear, but this was not the norm.

Yes it was.

Ferrari had some absolutely bonkers tyre management races. The times McLaren beat them on tyre wear was when Ferrari lacked pace and had to push in order to remain in front. (Imola, Mexico) or had to sit in dirty air to try and overtake. (Baku, Vegas)

The insane tyre management of the Ferrari was only obvious when they were in their natural positions. (Monza stint 2, Austin (including Sprint), Bahrain, Spa, Zandvoort, Baku stint 1) The tyres just straight up would not degrade at all when they were cruising and it was completely absurd. McLaren didn't have a single tyre management performance all season on the level of any of them.

The Ferrari had by far the best tyre wear, it was just a bit too slow and/or in the wrong track position to show it off a lot of the time.

I feel like you're proving my entire point. You're remembering the outliers in a small handful of races where Ferrari had fantastic race pace/tire wear, while ignoring that Mclaren had superior race pace/tire wear for like 80% of the season in comparison.

[mwillems]

I genuinely am not comprehending this idea that Ferrari had better tire wear than Mclaren last year in the first place. Ferrari had the occasional Sprint/Sunday race with better tire wear, but this was not the norm.

Yes it was.

Ferrari had some absolutely bonkers tyre management races. The times McLaren beat them on tyre wear was when Ferrari lacked pace and had to push in order to remain in front. (Imola, Mexico) or had to sit in dirty air to try and overtake. (Baku, Vegas)

The insane tyre management of the Ferrari was only obvious when they were in their natural positions. (Monza stint 2, Austin (including Sprint), Bahrain, Spa, Zandvoort, Baku stint 1) The tyres just straight up would not degrade at all when they were cruising and it was completely absurd. McLaren didn't have a single tyre management performance all season on the level of any of them.

The Ferrari had by far the best tyre wear, it was just a bit too slow and/or in the wrong track position to show it off a lot of the time.

I feel like you're proving my entire point. You're remembering the outliers in a small handful of races where Ferrari had fantastic race pace/tire wear, while ignoring that Mclaren had superior race pace/tire wear for like 80% of the season in comparison.

Ferrari were often better in Race than Q, and would come back in the race due to their tyre management. Once they got their package sorted they largely retained the tyre management but sorted out their outright pace for Q and balance for the race. Without those troubles struggling with their concept then Ferrari would have been the faster car overall, fortunately for Mclaren fans, our upgrades worked and their initial ones didn't. Also, watching several races, it was really clear they could be in dirty air and be fine, and the Mclaren couldn't, for instance, another example of the difference in cars. Their ability to follow other cars was exceptional. Think Leclerc at Baku. We had no such power.

In dirty air, in cold or wet conditions and apparently with certain tracks (Low downforce), the Mclaren lost pace and this happened several times this year and probably cost us quite a lot of points.

Through different articles, this has been put down to two traits. The first that the nose won't behave the way we want it to in those conditions, which is to say it doesn't really want to be responsive, which was the issue plaguing us for the first few years of this formula. The second is that the fronts also grain a lot causing us to lose further speed.

[bananapeel23]

I feel like you're proving my entire point. You're remembering the outliers in a small handful of races where Ferrari had fantastic race pace/tire wear, while ignoring that Mclaren had superior race pace/tire wear for like 80% of the season in comparison.

The point here is that when allowed to cruise at the ”natural” pace of the car (i.e. in the optimal temperature window), Ferrari was much kinder on their tyres than McLaren and could manage longer stints with respectable pace.

McLaren might’ve lost (just a random number used as an example) 0.05 seconds of pace per lap to deg while cruising, while Ferrari was losing 0.04. If McLaren would start out 0.2 seconds faster, it would take Ferrari 20 laps before their pace was better than McLaren. It would then take another 20 laps for their average pace across the stint to match McLaren.

Most stints aren’t 40 laps long, so while Ferrari had better deg, the overall lack of pace on fresh tyres meant they still had worse pace over the stint, despite better deg.

This issue was exacerbated when the drivers were in front of the McLarens, because they would have to defend for the entire stint, pushing harder and forcing the tyres out of their optimal working window. All while the McLaren could sit in the working window relying on their naturally better ”base” pace, waiting for the Ferrari tyres to deg off due to them being out of the optimal working window. (Imola, Baku stint 2, Mexico)

So essentially the only times that the amazing deg of the Ferrari was on display was when the stints were exceptionally long and they didn’t have to push to stay ahead. So essentially only when their race pace was already good or when the faster cars made mistakes (Austin, Baku stint 1, Monza stint 2).


Tyre wear isn’t everything and can only really compensate for poor pace in exceptional circumstances where the stints are incredibly long. The other time it shines is when you already start out the fastest AND have the best deg, meaning you can just cruise out front. That is how you get 20 second gaps to the 2nd fastest car. (A luxury Ferrari only had in Austin)

[Macklaren]

My memory of 2024 is very different -- for much of the season, we sat back and managed our pace at the start of every stint and unleashed devastating pace toward the end of the stint. Its not like our early pace advantage dropped off.

I think cold temps was the only clear weakness of the car in 2024

[CjC]

Graining the fronts was an issue and a touch of understeer too- I guess the 2 go hand in hand.

One thing that gives me some encouragement is during and after the 2023 season Stella said the team recognised areas that needed improving and once they rectified the chosen issue for 2024 they became either the best or second best in said area.
Long medium speed corners and (rear) tyre wear comes to mind.
I feel what ever weakness they decide to tackle from the MCL38 will become a strength on the MCL39. If the others create a better car than the MCL39 then hats off to them- they will have built an incredible car.

[bananapeel23]

My memory of 2024 is very different -- for much of the season, we sat back and managed our pace at the start of every stint and unleashed devastating pace toward the end of the stint. Its not like our early pace advantage dropped off.

I think cold temps was the only clear weakness of the car in 2024

That did indeed happen, but not against Ferrari. That was only really the case against Red Bull, where it happened a bunch of times, most notably Imola.

The only instances where Ferrari really got comprehensively beaten on tyre deg were Imola and Baku stint, where Leclerc was pushing like an animal, and where Leclerc sat in Piastri’s dirty air with a huge pace advantage for like 30 laps before his deg finally kicked in, respectively,

Either way what I mean to say is that McLaren had good enough tyre wear. I don’t think improving deg needs to be a priority for the MCL39 unless they feel Ferrari or Red Bull will get closer in terms of raw pace.