2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[swifteddie1]

Yes, its only 3 races but the other teams aren't going to be standing still in that time span. Theyre admitting that they are 2.5 months ....thats going to be tough to make up.

[lio007]

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8 of 10 teams have run a shakedown with McLaren and Haas the only ones not to.
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Ehm...Haas did run the '23 car on 11th Feb

[f1rules]

interesting debate for sure, i do find it strange that they didnt do, this is mclaren, they normally want to be as prepared as possible, and with a new driver onboard... This together with the not satisfied comment i do get some strange vibes and not the most positive, but for once lets hope our team surprises positively

[AR3-GP]

So now is about the other teams? You mentioned that McLaren struggled with the beginning of the season last year… I proved to you that even when they had a Shakedown and 3 days of testing and 1815km of running, they didn’t detected the problem.

This isn't really logical reasoning. Just because you didn't find a problem in a shakedown doesn't mean you should never do a shakedown again. What kind of reasoning is that?

You do them every year, as early as you can, unless you can't, because the car isn't ready.

Again… There was no early shakedown last season, the car run “flawlessly” in testing in Barcelona… No one is saying they won’t do one… Does it has to be at Silverstone? Do they find more value doing it in an environment where they can actually find something? They have the data, you don’t… I have a tendency to think that they know more than you and me.

Perhaps you are correct. I didn't mean to imply that I know anything for fact. I don't know. Maybe everything is fine.

I just think it's strange not to to get the early shakedown out of the way. It will cause grief if they only discover the issues next week. Keep in mind there's only about 15 days left until the first GP.

[swifteddie1]

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8 of 10 teams have run a shakedown with McLaren and Haas the only ones not to.
...

Ehm...Haas did run the '23 car on 11th Feb

I forgot about that...makes it even worse then. 9 out of 10 have had some sort of demo/shakedown.

[SmallSoldier]

This isn't really logical reasoning. Just because you didn't find a problem in a shakedown doesn't mean you should never do a shakedown again. What kind of reasoning is that?

You do them every year, as early as you can, unless you can't, because the car isn't ready.

Again… There was no early shakedown last season, the car run “flawlessly” in testing in Barcelona… No one is saying they won’t do one… Does it has to be at Silverstone? Do they find more value doing it in an environment where they can actually find something? They have the data, you don’t… I have a tendency to think that they know more than you and me.

Perhaps you are correct. I didn't mean to imply that I know anything for fact. I don't know. Maybe everything is fine.

I just think it's strange not to to get the early shakedown out of the way. It will cause grief if they only discover the issues next week. Keep in mind there's only about 15 days left until the first GP.

I hope so too (that they don’t face any issues like they did last season)… Let’s wait and see, so far no team (that we know of) have found any issues during their shakedown… It is only 100km, it is a systems check, the drivers won’t get much out of it since it is a very limited amount of laps, in a green track, with non-representative temperatures and “show” tires, therefore not a lot to be gained from it beyond making sure that the car starts and stays in one piece after a few laps

They may very well be finalizing in production a few pieces that they would like to have on the car during the filming day to extract the most out of it… We can speculate a lot, ultimately there has to be a bit of faith that the team knows what they are doing, there is a substantial brain pool and millions of dollars / euros spent to make sure that is the case.

[Ground Effect]

I hope I am wrong, but its all a little troubling.

The general mood in the team at the launch was that they aren't where they want to be and hope an upgrade in Baku will address their issues. Baku is in 2.5 months.

James Key as far as I can tell was no where at the launch.

8 of 10 teams have run a shakedown with McLaren and Haas the only ones not to. Yes, a shakedown will not uncover every issue with the car, but it will certainly help you work out any little niggles with the new car.

Something doesn't seem right, but i really hope i am wrong.

Either way I will be cheering for the team this year and hoping for the best.

Andreas never said the upgrade is to address any issue.

As for what the MCL60 can deliver, he added: “In terms of performance expectations, we remain realistic for the short-term. We will see where we are in Bahrain at the test and at the first race. Independently of that, we have good developments in the pipeline, so we remain optimistic for the season ahead.”

The above is from F1.com. From other quotes, it just appears that the team discovered a good development path, but too late in the day to incorporate it in the launch spec, so it'll come with the first upgrade of the season. So the not "entirely happy" remark seems to be about tangible performance left on the table that could have made it to Bahrain. This could be a legacy of the ibrake issues that affected the pace of development of the 2023 car, as Seidl said last year that development started a bit late.
These are Stella's comments during the launch.

Pushed on where he anticipated McLaren to be at the start of the year, Stella suggested that it was impossible to know what rivals had produced.

However, he said that it would be wrong to be too optimistic if the team already knew it was giving performance away.

"It is always difficult to translate what you see over the winter in terms of development to where you're going to be in terms of pecking order," he said. "But we try to relate this to ourselves.

"Like I said before, I think while we are happy with the development of the car in most of the areas, there's some areas in which we kind of realised a little late in development, some really strong directions. So not necessarily we have been able to capitalise on this direction in the very short term.

[Ground Effect]

Yes, its only 3 races but the other teams aren't going to be standing still in that time span. Theyre admitting that they are 2.5 months ....thats going to be tough to make up.

Do you know for a fact where the other teams stand? Are you certain they're ahead of McLaren on performance, even before a wheel is turned in pre season? Are you certain McLaren will need to be making up a deficit? It can go either way, but why assume it will only go one way? It's like writing a test and realising as you're submitting that you didn't answer the last couple of questions and automatically believing you'll be at the bottom of the class. What if the others ended up getting most of the questions wrong while you got all the ones you attempted right?

[Ground Effect]

interesting debate for sure, i do find it strange that they didnt do, this is mclaren, they normally want to be as prepared as possible, and with a new driver onboard... This together with the not satisfied comment i do get some strange vibes and not the most positive, but for once lets hope our team surprises positively

Still a few days before pre season. Mercedes is using Silverstone today, so who's to say they McLaren won't do theirs any day from tomorrow? Besides, folks on here say it doesn't make sense to do the shakedown in Bahrain before the test, but isn't that where the issue cropped up after having a shakedown and excellent pre season in Barcelona? Maybe they'll go there to check out what they need to and validate all is OK. Too much is being made of the not entirely happy remark. As far as I'm concerned, it shows optimism for what's in the pipeline, that it will be a good step.
I think you posted on autosport a pic of James Key with Lando, Oscar and Zak. They all looked pretty happy to me.

[Lucky]

[Lucky]

The livery is certainly terrible.

[Emag]

Nevermind the livery. The fact that they are planning the showdown for Bahrain and so close to the actual test makes no sense to me.

Nobody really hopes for it to happen, but if something goes catastrophically wrong and they have to fly parts from the factory to fix it, they risk losing testing time. Can't see why they wouldn't trial out the systems in silverstone close to the factory.

[mclaren111]

The livery is certainly terrible.

Agree... I Hate this shade of blue... The blue on the nose looks horrible...

[Ground Effect]

Nevermind the livery. The fact that they are planning the showdown for Bahrain and so close to the actual test makes no sense to me.

Nobody really hopes for it to happen, but if something goes catastrophically wrong and they have to fly parts from the factory to fix it, they risk losing testing time. Can't see why they wouldn't trial out the systems in silverstone close to the factory.

‘Catastrophically’ The race is In Bahrain, a week after testing. Any part that can break, needs replacing, will be in Bahrain. People are sounding like a shakedown is the end all and be all. I’ve never seen this kind of overreaction on this forum before, you’d think they were launching the MCL01. A shakedown in Bahrain is probably more informative than in a cold, wet Silverstone.

[BMMR61]

Craig Scarborough (Scarbs) reckons the MCL60 is a fundamental shift and an attempt to copy last season’s Red Bull. He foresees problems getting the car sufficiently developed as other copied designs Racing Point?) have in the past, which gels with some of the comments from Andreas. So, do we go into 2023 with a fundamentally different concept which the team will have to learn to develop?

On the low key statements coming from the team I would not be concerned at all, even if the car ain’t great out of the box. Bragging can be a burden to bear, low key is fine by me. Obviously if the team performed at Bahrain like last year I’d be disappointed but the team bounced back pretty quickly. The longer term issues were the fundamental flaws of the car, so from that perspective it’s probably a good thing to be making fundamental design concept changes.