2022 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[McL-H]

These are all sponsor videos basically in which they never honestly say what the situation really is and what the prospects really are. Though, between the lines of what Andreas is saying, I make up that he believes they can find the missing performance in the coming weeks. If that is true, it’s not a fundamental problem with the car. Let’s wait for the next 3-4 races and see where we stand then.

I slept away most of my disappointment, I hope some others here did too. Let’s stay positive and trust the great team we have in fixing what is wrong. It is motorsport and having a good car is never a guarantee. We win and lose together. As long as we can overcome the difficulties thrown at us and keep aiming high, I am confident we will be back. We criticised the team yesterday and they deserved that. But now they also deserve our support. Criticise when necessary, but support always.

[AtlasZX]

Both drivers now need to prove they're WDC material more than ever, and try to overcome the car poor performances in order to keep the team in the midfield until the problems will be fixed and the car will be a truly midfield one.

[mwillems]

How do you know that? Is that speculation or is it backed by any info?

James Key:

The car itself as a platform is working well. Mechanically it’s fine, Aerodynamically it does what it’s supposed to do.

The drivers aren’t finding the extremes that we had in last year’s car, in terms of balance and difficulty. It’s a lot more consistent in that respect.

https://the-race.com/formula-1/is-mclar ... -a-crisis/

One interpretation is that they hit the performance target, but their target was too low compared to the competition.

Somehow the car "lacks grip" (compared to the competition) even though the mechanicals work correctly and the aerodynamics work correctly. What else could explain that other than overly conservative design targets?

James Key:

We need more grip – aerodynamically, mechanically.

That's not what he said at all, that's your interpretation of the quote.

Why else would a car lack grip if it is mechanically fine and the aerodynamics work correctly?

Good scoop, even if it's rather distressing in terms of long term hope for speedy improvement. It would be a shame to think they just aimed too low when setting their performance goals.

They won't set a target and stop, this is a misnomer, they'd be insane to do that.

Any target will be a minimum to feel like they have achieved something and because it's nice to have targets, but the driving force would always be to get as much efficient df as possible from anywhere they can. They won't stop if they get close to a number and they know that any benchmark they set has no context until they see the other teams. They will relentlessly chase that DF.

The car had performance at Barcelona and now it doesn't.
The brakes seem to be part of it, we were slower in Bahrain testing and even further back now.
The track doesn't suit us and other cars appear to have better ideas and have had the ability to bring developments where we had to fix an issue at this track.

Let's see where we are in 5 races, in the meantime I look forward to seeing our race pace which I expect to be better.

[Motörhead]

I know this topic has been done to death but Mclaren is fighting with 1 hand behind their back for years now. They do not have the latest wind tunnel which means they are missing refined data and it is not even in the same country. They need to fly parts back and forward. They also running a primitive racing simulator. The infrastructure deficits to the top teams are huge which Seidl has repeatedly mentioned. He clearly stated not to expect to fight for championships until 2024.

We all here were hoping for a hail mary but these deficits are massive. Lets hope they can turn this around sooner but realistically Mclaren will not be firing on all cylinders until they have "EQUAL" infrastructure to the top teams.

Firstly the cologne wind tunnel is still a very very good tunnel. May not be top drawer anymore but it's still a fine wind tunnel. Second the simulator is not outdated, it still does what it needs.

The car was too conservative and the design direction has failed. That is not the wind tunnel or simulators fault.

The one differentiator that the Wind tunnel in current use, compared to the competitors is that it doesn’t have a turntable.
A turntable is a rotating platform which is able to move the rolling road in Yaw as the model moves in yaw, hence tracking the model as it stears, wheels and all, simulating a corner.
Currently, when the model is yawed, it has to turn on the rolling road so it is perpendicular to the direction of the road travel.
I think that this is one of the ‘tools’ that James Key might be referring to.
Undoubtedly, the current facility is a fine wind tunnel and produces very fine results, especially in a straight line but this could well be the reason that the slow corner conundrum still evades Mclaren.
Historically, force India, when they tested there always had a very slippy car, in a straight line, also Ferrari.
If you asked any aerodynamicist, they would agree that this is not the optimum solution.

[MrGapes]

The people who are being dramatic and bashing the team now are the same people who were dramatic when Ferrari out scored us, out qualified us, when qualifying and races went wrong last year….. these are the same people who were hailing the team when they got a top 3. McLaren have had a smooth journey up till now for the last 3 years slowly improving with little issues, just because there’s a small road bump (literally first weekend of season) doesn’t mean all that progress goes out the window. Have some patience and faith.

[kfrantzios]

Thankfully there are still people in this forum with a certain level of maturity. Otherwise this thread would be unbearable. The "ignore" function of this forum is not working for me as i can still see those absurd comments that i would like to avoid when quoted by others.

The race is today.
Sure the Quali was an utter disappointment. Expected though if you consider the outlook of the team in the second part of testing. It would be unexpected if the team had Barcelona form.
Lets see what happens in the race. Tyre management is paramount.
I was looking forward to the promised upgrade. It never came and in my opinion the brake issue had nothing to do with it.
Seidl will not allow a panic mode in the team.

[Emag]

Between brake duct issues, and optimizations that couldn't be found due to the limited running, there should be a decent chunk of "free" laptime to gain on others.

If that's not enough to put us at the sharp end of the midfield, I hope there's enough development potential to improve the car through updates.

Edit: Lando was not very optimistic on race pace for today, but he might have felt down after quali. Plus Lando likes to downplay stuff on general so who knows. Let's see.

[runningmanz]

The people who are being dramatic and bashing the team now are the same people who were dramatic when Ferrari out scored us, out qualified us, when qualifying and races went wrong last year….. these are the same people who were hailing the team when they got a top 3. McLaren have had a smooth journey up till now for the last 3 years slowly improving with little issues, just because there’s a small road bump (literally first weekend of season) doesn’t mean all that progress goes out the window. Have some patience and faith.

Like I mentioned before this thread is virtually a godsend for rational and constructive conversation for the McLaren team on the most part. The Autosport McLaren thread is a dumpster fire at the moment, a real disgrace, you would think the world is ending and we haven't even had one race yet. Lets at least give our team of well credentialed members a decent chance to fight back and pull us out of this early slump we find ourselves in with this new car and regulations.

[FittingMechanics]

All these fairweather fans should just pick up and go. Ferrari or Red Bull thread is just around the corner.

Whoever is a fan for a long time remembers many heartbreaks and years waiting. I am a fan from late 90s and I remember being disappointed in early 2000s, then again in 2010s and then especially during the Honda period. That's life. Either accept ups and downs or leave.

With that out of the way, I don't get why everyone went into doom and gloom mode. There are easy explanations why the car suffered:
1. They lost half of their running in Bahrain test meaning they could not dial in the setup or the car. With the brakes overheating it's likely they never really worked on setup or pushed the car properly. This is especially true for Ricciardo who was Covid positive. All this adds up and in the end.
2. Braking solution is obviously compromised - much bigger than needed in Barcelona.
3. Ricciardo lost a lot of running in FP3
4. Mercedes probably did not unlock the engine fully (all Mercedes teams seem to be down on pace)

I'm looking forward to the race and I feel we'll get much better results in the coming races. Maybe not as good as we hoped (podium challenging) but that's how it goes with these rule resets. We knew it could get us closer or further away from the top teams.

[Emag]

All these fairweather fans should just pick up and go. Ferrari or Red Bull thread is just around the corner.

Whoever is a fan for a long time remembers many heartbreaks and years waiting. I am a fan from late 90s and I remember being disappointed in early 2000s, then again in 2010s and then especially during the Honda period. That's life. Either accept ups and downs or leave.

With that out of the way, I don't get why everyone went into doom and gloom mode. There are easy explanations why the car suffered:
1. They lost half of their running in Bahrain test meaning they could not dial in the setup or the car. With the brakes overheating it's likely they never really worked on setup or pushed the car properly. This is especially true for Ricciardo who was Covid positive. All this adds up and in the end.
2. Braking solution is obviously compromised - much bigger than needed in Barcelona.
3. Ricciardo lost a lot of running in FP3
4. Mercedes probably did not unlock the engine fully (all Mercedes teams seem to be down on pace)

I'm looking forward to the race and I feel we'll get much better results in the coming races. Maybe not as good as we hoped (podium challenging) but that's how it goes with these rule resets. We knew it could get us closer or further away from the top teams.

Man, the only "beef" I have is the timespan between now and the last competitive McLaren. Those dips you mentioned were disappointing at the time given the team's status at that period. But the relative performance of the dips back then is actually considered a good season for the team now.

Obviously, Ferrari fans have been "mad" for ages because they haven't been able to win a title for longer than McLaren actually, but at least they have won races and been on the contention a couple of times over these years.

During that same timespan, we have had to endure backmarker levels of performance for consecutive seasons, which for a team like McLaren were unprecedented at the time. We had to endure the disappointment of 2018, with false promises over the years allowing us to believe that the team itself was the same as it has always been, they were just being held back by the engine.

And then we had a positive period of revitalization, culminating last year by winning races and getting poles on what should have been a heavily compromised package due to the locked regulations. Things were looking up, McLaren was on the rise and everything was hinting towards a return to top form again in the short-term future.

I don't know how you can be a fan of this team and not feel immense disappointment after what was shown yesterday to be honest. I am not saying we should all just give up and f*ck it all now. But as I said before, it's been too long since 2012 man, I am starting to forget how it feels like to have my favorite team be competitive.

And for some of us, including me, the passion for the team itself is bigger than the passion for the sport. Kimi's silver McLaren battling Alonso is literally my first childhood memory of the sport. When that team is not competitive, it makes the whole F1 experience not enjoyable for me, and that su*ks.

[Mansell89]

A sobering weekend so far as a McLaren fan but this was always going to be tough with the reset and leaps forward in both Ferrari and Renault power, so any time you don’t dial in your car you will be struggling in Q2 as everyone now is competitive.

At Barca, even though no one was fully wound up from what we can see- the car did seem to be well balanced and had a decent front end.

I think almost everyone has said we understeer here in Bahrain - we have never looked happy here since we came here for the official test.

I’d like to think we will dial it in and will be much happier when we’ve sorted out the brakes - we saw Alpine make a sizeable step forward from testing with their race upgrade and no doubt we can make similar gains with a breakthrough in set up.

Best thing we can do today is get a race under Ricciardo’s belt and get him back up to race fitness having had the covid setbacks, and then take the data away to analyse.

As a side note, I think we might see cars happier on different compounds- the C1-3 seems to have held us back I think and I just think our car will be much more alive on circuits where Pirelli go softer. That’s just a hunch from visuals- so of course may be wrong.

Let’s get racing and let’s see how we go on a long run.

[JDC123]

Watching F1tv Tech talk and Sam Collins doing his pitlane walk when at the Mclaren garage and noting the differences in the front brake ducts he mentioned that the front cake tins no longer have a cutout on the top like they did during pre season testing. I do have to wonder if the team were trying to be sneaky and get some of the old style front tyre warming tricks back and its gone wrong in the desert heat, lack of front tyre warming at least goes some way to explain the terrible understeer. If today's race pace is more competitive (not race winning put we are closer % wise to the front runners in lap time) then perhaps it getting a chunk of performance would simply be getting into the correct window over one lap. Then once that has been accomplished a diagnosis of where to get the rest of the performance (upgrades etc) can be done and solutions made and implemented.

I had a similar train of thought last night. The car's performance is obviously not just simply an issue with the brakes, but perhaps the 'interim' titanium ducting/fairing has had a knock on affect at impacting front tyre warm up. All just speculation but it would go someway to explaining the cronic understeer seen this weekend.

[Redragon]

This is just my opinion but I think this Mercedes engine already homologated on the combustion side, fuel and mapping is underpowered. 3th or 4th on the grid at the moment. I think many are going to regret to have ditched Honda. Patience is a virtue. The crossing arms position of Zack while Andreas was talking to sky during Qualy says it all. No quick solution they are slow.

[Emag]

This is just my opinion but I think this Mercedes engine already homologated on the combustion side, fuel and mapping is underpowered. 3th or 4th on the grid at the moment. I think many are going to regret to have ditched Honda. Patience is a virtue. The crossing arms position of Zack while Andreas was talking to sky during Qualy says it all. No quick solution they are slow.

I wouldn't read much into body language. They are obviously disappointed like we are right now. Nobody is going to be dancing in happiness after that performance.

[Redragon]

This is just my opinion but I think this Mercedes engine already homologated on the combustion side, fuel and mapping is underpowered. 3th or 4th on the grid at the moment. I think many are going to regret to have ditched Honda. Patience is a virtue. The crossing arms position of Zack while Andreas was talking to sky during Qualy says it all. No quick solution they are slow.

I wouldn't read much into body language. They are obviously disappointed like we are right now. Nobody is going to be dancing in happiness after that performance.

Let's see where there are after Spain. But a cocky character as Zack hides from the cameras during the whole weekend so far it means the problem is bigger that just brake ducts.