2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[the EDGE]

It’s amazing how journalist can take a couple of lines said in the winners press conference into a whole story a week later.

They did the same with AMR early in the season. Alonso says he would like it if they can develop well and maybe challenge RB after bahrain -> Alonso title challenge??!??!?

Clearly a successful formula for engagement

Nevertheless, good basis for optimism for the 2024 car. Yes RedBull weren't engaged in a season-long battle with a close competitor requiring late development but..... McLaren's last upgrades were installed at Singapore in September. Allowing a few weeks of fabrication that actually means the design office were finished on this year's car in August at the latest. Hardly a late start, and lots of extremely strong data coming through with the gains made including setup data acquisition. While they have a clear new platform objective for the "MCL61" I believe it will be more evolutionary than revolutionary, due to positive correlation of the developments. Evolutionary is always a safer route than revolutionary - as I said, good ground for optimism of the new car.

Yes good reason to be optimistic

Having an understanding of how to develop your package will always be more beneficial than starting early on next years car whilst still not understanding your current car, and whilst other challengers appear to not know why their performance fluctuates, McLaren are making all the right noises about knowing what they need to do to address their shortcoming and develop further

[mwillems]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-2 ... /10544867/

Thanks for that. I thought the last few paras where Stella talks about the importance of the starting point for development, and how he feels the "gradient of development" is more important were a good insight. Even though the new hires for next season can't or won't have an effect on the launch car, they can certainly impact the in-season "gradient of development" in a big way.

All just feelings: AMR will start the season strongly, Merc will be on top of their "'fluctuating form" as the article so beautifully puts it. Alfa Sauber may move up, if Key can create a good base car for them.

I like hearing from Stella and hearing that 6 to 7 months are spent dedicated only to development of the new car was interesting, because it suggests 5 months where we are doing parallell development. So if we drop development of the existing car in July it suggests they start looking of the new concepts in around March time when the season starts and lessons around the existing car start coming in thick and fast.

[MrGapes]

Am I right to believe that a new low df package is coming to Vegas, I recall Stella mentioning this in an article.

I guess it will be slimmed rear wing with no corner notches and the bottom plane will be slightly spooned to work with the new beam wing configurations.

[Darth-Piekus]

Am I right to believe that a new low df package is coming to Vegas, I recall Stella mentioning this in an article.

I guess it will be slimmed rear wing with no corner notches and the bottom plane will be slightly spooned to work with the new beam wing configurations.

Hopefully it gives us something to match that insane DRS Red Bull top speed.

[mwillems]

Am I right to believe that a new low df package is coming to Vegas, I recall Stella mentioning this in an article.

I guess it will be slimmed rear wing with no corner notches and the bottom plane will be slightly spooned to work with the new beam wing configurations.

We had a new low DF wing at Monza, there may be an update to it I suppose, of the winglet variety, but otherwise I'd expect them to be using parts they already have available at this stage in the season.

[mwillems]

Am I right to believe that a new low df package is coming to Vegas, I recall Stella mentioning this in an article.

I guess it will be slimmed rear wing with no corner notches and the bottom plane will be slightly spooned to work with the new beam wing configurations.

Hopefully it gives us something to match that insane DRS Red Bull top speed.

With DRS is closed the slippiness of the RB and the Mclaren is similar. It is when DRS is open that RB take a clear edge in top speed. It's a little part of the reason why RB have a Qualy advantage that disappears a little in the race.

Edit: Saying that, we may see the RB Top speed advantage return as the wings will be so small.

[SmallSoldier]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-2 ... /10544867/

Thanks for that. I thought the last few paras where Stella talks about the importance of the starting point for development, and how he feels the "gradient of development" is more important were a good insight. Even though the new hires for next season can't or won't have an effect on the launch car, they can certainly impact the in-season "gradient of development" in a big way.

All just feelings: AMR will start the season strongly, Merc will be on top of their "'fluctuating form" as the article so beautifully puts it. Alfa Sauber may move up, if Key can create a good base car for them.

Key will have a good idea of what is it the made McLaren jump in performance so much this season… Even when he wasn’t there for the later upgrades, the new concept was most definitely part of the discussion and probably already in development before he left.

[Ground Effect]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-2 ... /10544867/

Thanks for that. I thought the last few paras where Stella talks about the importance of the starting point for development, and how he feels the "gradient of development" is more important were a good insight. Even though the new hires for next season can't or won't have an effect on the launch car, they can certainly impact the in-season "gradient of development" in a big way.

All just feelings: AMR will start the season strongly, Merc will be on top of their "'fluctuating form" as the article so beautifully puts it. Alfa Sauber may move up, if Key can create a good base car for them.

Key will have a good idea of what is it the made McLaren jump in performance so much this season… Even when he wasn’t there for the later upgrades, the new concept was most definitely part of the discussion and probably already in development before he left.

I get the feeling he had been frozen out pretty early in the development cycle. He was conspicuously absent for the launch of the MCL60. Stella also pointed out that the last bit signed off by the "previous" structure was the Baku floor upgrade. Stella also stated that the subsequent upgrades were being led by Peter Prodromou. I don't see Key being part of discussions led by Prod....

[mwillems]

Thanks for that. I thought the last few paras where Stella talks about the importance of the starting point for development, and how he feels the "gradient of development" is more important were a good insight. Even though the new hires for next season can't or won't have an effect on the launch car, they can certainly impact the in-season "gradient of development" in a big way.

All just feelings: AMR will start the season strongly, Merc will be on top of their "'fluctuating form" as the article so beautifully puts it. Alfa Sauber may move up, if Key can create a good base car for them.

Key will have a good idea of what is it the made McLaren jump in performance so much this season… Even when he wasn’t there for the later upgrades, the new concept was most definitely part of the discussion and probably already in development before he left.

I get the feeling he had been frozen out pretty early in the development cycle. He was conspicuously absent for the launch of the MCL60. Stella also pointed out that the last bit signed off by the "previous" structure was the Baku floor upgrade. Stella also stated that the subsequent upgrades were being led by Peter Prodromou. I don't see Key being part of discussions led by Prod....

The first upgrade was Baku and that was a "sighter" upgrade to understand the floor. Baku was delivered one month after Key left and likely would have been under his eye through most of the development. The meaty stuff came as key was leaving and we don't know whether he was sent home whilst a package was discussed, or how that happened, or how much was known about the direction and the detail at that point.

You'd assume there was at least a general idea floating around if not the detail since the Austria spec, which represents the detail, was starting not long before Key left and he may well have been kept well away in those last few weeks.

That said, he has friends of course, and I'm sure he has some knowledge. But the lesson that was learnt, or at least advertised by the team, is that this formula is about synergy, and that the fine details of the floor have to be tailored to work with the sidepods and other parts and that you can't simply copy geometries, just being close in geometries isn't enough to make a package sing, everything has to be in tune. Who knows if he understands how that was made to work at Mclaren.

[FittingMechanics]

I think it is obvious Key knew about the idea and he was against it, betting his future on his "concept" which didn't work well at the start of the season. It is unlikely that Key was fired for bad performance and then suddenly team finds massive amount of pace and a new concept.

How I see it - there are two concepts they are working on, aero guys/Prodromou wants to go one direction and Key wants to go other direction. Key overrules the rest of the team and when performance isn't there - he pays the price.

Key knowing the "idea" is a good point - it may help Sauber close the gap but I think bridging the gap to front running teams is not possible in the short term for them.

[organic]

Not to turn this into a sauber thread, but even with key's help they have many problems elsewhere. Their infrastructure is not up to scratch, how good are their simulators, their quality control and reliability sucks, worst pitstop times on the grid, reliably terrible strategy.. I think even if they built a top 5 car they'd be bottling points constantly

[mwillems]

I think it is obvious Key knew about the idea and he was against it, betting his future on his "concept" which didn't work well at the start of the season. It is unlikely that Key was fired for bad performance and then suddenly team finds massive amount of pace and a new concept.

How I see it - there are two concepts they are working on, aero guys/Prodromou wants to go one direction and Key wants to go other direction. Key overrules the rest of the team and when performance isn't there - he pays the price.

Key knowing the "idea" is a good point - it may help Sauber close the gap but I think bridging the gap to front running teams is not possible in the short term for them.

The problem was that the floor wasn't working as well as it could under the changes for '23 and they had to start from scratch later in the development cycle of the new car as they realised too late, sometime in early winter last year. I'm not sure why this was, perhaps he didn't allocate resource to testing one or two ideas or conditions that would have highlighted this earlier. I think in the past there had been some talk around Key's conservative decision making but I wouldn't say that was the issue over this past winter. It looks to be the opposite of last year (Cutting corners) and some sense checks that should have been done weren't and that Key was on the hook for it.

[mwillems]

Am I right to believe that a new low df package is coming to Vegas, I recall Stella mentioning this in an article.

I guess it will be slimmed rear wing with no corner notches and the bottom plane will be slightly spooned to work with the new beam wing configurations.

Just to add, not sure if this will actually be Baku spec and not Monza spec. That said, did we have a Baku spec wing? I don't think we do, next step for us after the Monza wing is the Silverstone wing, if I am not mistaken. I expect to see Mclaren continuing to test multiple wing options.

[f1rules]

not to get into this again, but i think Keys main problem was his inability to lead. He was micromanaging and suffocating departments, making it into a one man show, his, and he failed in most areas, now the departments are "set free" with responsabilities and we see the result, offcourse he will know some of what they did, but the last big update i dont think he had any influence on, and with next years car he will be completely in the dark, Sauber, Audi and Seidl has an insane big task on their hands

[SmallSoldier]

Thanks for that. I thought the last few paras where Stella talks about the importance of the starting point for development, and how he feels the "gradient of development" is more important were a good insight. Even though the new hires for next season can't or won't have an effect on the launch car, they can certainly impact the in-season "gradient of development" in a big way.

All just feelings: AMR will start the season strongly, Merc will be on top of their "'fluctuating form" as the article so beautifully puts it. Alfa Sauber may move up, if Key can create a good base car for them.

Key will have a good idea of what is it the made McLaren jump in performance so much this season… Even when he wasn’t there for the later upgrades, the new concept was most definitely part of the discussion and probably already in development before he left.

I get the feeling he had been frozen out pretty early in the development cycle. He was conspicuously absent for the launch of the MCL60. Stella also pointed out that the last bit signed off by the "previous" structure was the Baku floor upgrade. Stella also stated that the subsequent upgrades were being led by Peter Prodromou. I don't see Key being part of discussions led by Prod....

The new floor was part of the concept, the parts aren’t made individually… The changes to the floor, the changes to the sidepods were all conceptually signed off probably even before testing started, the lag in time between testing and their introduction matches what one would expect for concept optimization (CFD), manufacturing of parts for testing, Wind Tunnel testing and manufacturing of the parts to be brought to the track (Austria)… If Key was in anyway involved in conversations regarding the new floor, then he knows what the new concept was trying to achieve and how.

Whether he was part of those discussions or not, I have no idea… But it would be very surprising that he was not included… Key was remaining at McLaren until Sanchez became available and a deal was struck, therefore I don’t think he was out of the loop.

Furthermore, the new concept apparently was one that was already identified by the team previously and simply a direction they decided not to go towards… He will bring that knowledge to Alfa Romeo, how much can they do with that information? They should get a good jump in performance out of it, with the new regs the key (pun intended) was to understand which concept works and why… Then it is a matter of the team iterating and finding additional performance