2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[lio007]

As Seidl said last year, McLaren are a couple of years off. He’s now left, which says everything you need to know. If there was something exciting to stick around for, he’d still be there. Zak stated the team would not see the benefit of the new wind tunnel until 2025 either.

Unfortunately, I can’t see McLaren making any real progress this year. The top 3 are miles ahead.

Zak (or was it Stella?) said recently that new windtunnel will be online mid-2024 and be used exclusively for the 2025 car.

The WT will be ready by mid-2023 having first impacts on the 2024 car.

[AR3-GP]

As Seidl said last year, McLaren are a couple of years off. He’s now left, which says everything you need to know. If there was something exciting to stick around for, he’d still be there. Zak stated the team would not see the benefit of the new wind tunnel until 2025 either.

Unfortunately, I can’t see McLaren making any real progress this year. The top 3 are miles ahead.

Zak (or was it Stella?) said recently that new windtunnel will be online mid-2024 and be used exclusively for the 2025 car.

During the launch, Zak mentioned that the Wind Tunnel will be ready by mid “2023”, but it won’t be used for the 2023 car (MCL60) but for the development of the 2024 car since by mid season they will already be working on next year’s car.

Thank you for the correction, I got my numbers thrown off by a year .

[SmallSoldier]

Zak (or was it Stella?) said recently that new windtunnel will be online mid-2024 and be used exclusively for the 2025 car.

During the launch, Zak mentioned that the Wind Tunnel will be ready by mid “2023”, but it won’t be used for the 2023 car (MCL60) but for the development of the 2024 car since by mid season they will already be working on next year’s car.

Thank you for the correction, I got my numbers thrown off by a year .

It happens

[mwillems]

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.

I watched the video with Craig, I believe he is been a bit rough on his analysis (I believe there was even mention that McLaren also copied RB’s suspension, when that is definitely not the case)… After every car has debuted, there is clearly 3 potential “concepts” that seem to work well… You can have an undercut, you can have a tub (or a mix of both) or you can have “tiny pods”… Because RB, Ferrari and Mercedes were as expected the top 3 last season, any attempt to go for any of the philosophies, will automatically label you a copy of (insert here depending on your concept)… We’ve gotten to the point that even teams that arguably are doing their own thing (undercut + tub / ramps) are said to be copying both Ferrari and RB.

Watch Kyle’s video (Kyle Engineers), he is pretty good at explaining what is going on with the car… He considers it an evolution of the MCL36.

The team also pointed out last year that these designs seen on the faster cars were not new to them, and that in hindsight they'd wished they'd been more aggressive.

[SmallSoldier]

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.

I watched the video with Craig, I believe he is been a bit rough on his analysis (I believe there was even mention that McLaren also copied RB’s suspension, when that is definitely not the case)… After every car has debuted, there is clearly 3 potential “concepts” that seem to work well… You can have an undercut, you can have a tub (or a mix of both) or you can have “tiny pods”… Because RB, Ferrari and Mercedes were as expected the top 3 last season, any attempt to go for any of the philosophies, will automatically label you a copy of (insert here depending on your concept)… We’ve gotten to the point that even teams that arguably are doing their own thing (undercut + tub / ramps) are said to be copying both Ferrari and RB.

Watch Kyle’s video (Kyle Engineers), he is pretty good at explaining what is going on with the car… He considers it an evolution of the MCL36.

The team also pointed out last year that these designs seen on the faster cars were not new to them, and that in hindsight they'd wished they'd been more aggressive.

Actually one could argue that some of these concepts are pretty old:

Downwash Sidepods = Check
Undercut = Check
Cannon Exit = Check
Cannon Exit Aimed between Rear Wing and Beam Wing = Check
(It even uses a similar ramp on the Exit Cannon that Mercedes showed in the W14)

9 Years Ago:



Picture by @Blackout below (thank you for reminding me of this car!)

[mwillems]

I watched the video with Craig, I believe he is been a bit rough on his analysis (I believe there was even mention that McLaren also copied RB’s suspension, when that is definitely not the case)… After every car has debuted, there is clearly 3 potential “concepts” that seem to work well… You can have an undercut, you can have a tub (or a mix of both) or you can have “tiny pods”… Because RB, Ferrari and Mercedes were as expected the top 3 last season, any attempt to go for any of the philosophies, will automatically label you a copy of (insert here depending on your concept)… We’ve gotten to the point that even teams that arguably are doing their own thing (undercut + tub / ramps) are said to be copying both Ferrari and RB.

Watch Kyle’s video (Kyle Engineers), he is pretty good at explaining what is going on with the car… He considers it an evolution of the MCL36.

The team also pointed out last year that these designs seen on the faster cars were not new to them, and that in hindsight they'd wished they'd been more aggressive.

Actually one could argue that some of these concepts are pretty old:

Downwash Sidepods = Check
Undercut = Check
Cannon Exit = Check
Cannon Exit Aimed between Rear Wing and Beam Wing = Check
(It even uses a similar ramp on the Exit Cannon that Mercedes showed in the W14)

9 Years Ago:

https://i.imgur.com/3tV1O1J.jpg

Picture by @Blackout below (thank you for reminding me of this car!)

https://i.imgur.com/hzQQzOa.jpg

I think the context of the current regs and how everything works together as a package is the hard part, rather than understanding the undercut and the Venturi effect etc

But you know that anyway, you were being uncharacteristically loose with the facts to push the point home

[SmallSoldier]

The team also pointed out last year that these designs seen on the faster cars were not new to them, and that in hindsight they'd wished they'd been more aggressive.

Actually one could argue that some of these concepts are pretty old:

Downwash Sidepods = Check
Undercut = Check
Cannon Exit = Check
Cannon Exit Aimed between Rear Wing and Beam Wing = Check
(It even uses a similar ramp on the Exit Cannon that Mercedes showed in the W14)

9 Years Ago:

https://i.imgur.com/3tV1O1J.jpg

Picture by @Blackout below (thank you for reminding me of this car!)

https://i.imgur.com/hzQQzOa.jpg

I think the context of the current regs and how everything works together as a package is the hard part, rather than understanding the undercut and the Venturi effect etc

But you know that anyway, you were being uncharacteristically loose with the facts to push the point home

I was just having a laugh really… I find it a bit disrespectful to call them “Red Bull Clones”, the regulations were ultimately going to show that one concept was going to be superior and the tendency would be to pursue that line and it’s not like there is a ton of innovation in such concept

[mwillems]

I was just having a laugh really… I find it a bit disrespectful to call them “Red Bull Clones”, the regulations were ultimately going to show that one concept was going to be superior and the tendency would be to pursue that line and it’s not like there is a ton of innovation in such concept

I'm not even sure what people expect. Let's pursue something slower just to be different?

Hmmm. No.

The RB ideas were already considered by Mclaren and I'm sure other teams during the previous years car design in mid-late '21. I'm not sure how much of it was new, just that RB had the time, and budget, <cough> <cough>, to explore it.

And now I have dropped that grenade I shall leave the room.

[AR3-GP]

Actually one could argue that some of these concepts are pretty old:

Downwash Sidepods = Check
Undercut = Check
Cannon Exit = Check
Cannon Exit Aimed between Rear Wing and Beam Wing = Check
(It even uses a similar ramp on the Exit Cannon that Mercedes showed in the W14)

9 Years Ago:

https://i.imgur.com/3tV1O1J.jpg

Picture by @Blackout below (thank you for reminding me of this car!)

https://i.imgur.com/hzQQzOa.jpg

I think the context of the current regs and how everything works together as a package is the hard part, rather than understanding the undercut and the Venturi effect etc

But you know that anyway, you were being uncharacteristically loose with the facts to push the point home

I was just having a laugh really… I find it a bit disrespectful to call them “Red Bull Clones”, the regulations were ultimately going to show that one concept was going to be superior and the tendency would be to pursue that line and it’s not like there is a ton of innovation in such concept

I'm also finding this "Red Bull clone" talk to be quite lazy.

[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.

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?

No one outside the team is going to know where they stand. But the McLaren body language and comments are in stark contrast to the quite confidence at Aston Martin for example. Its also unusual for the Technical Director not to appear at the launch.

To use your analogy about taking a test....if you know the class on average scores 7 out of 10 and you have not answered 4 of the 10 questions before turning in the test, you can anticipate that you are probably going to score below average compared to everyone.

My point is, saying you've left development on the table is not a good sign.

All will be revealed at the first race....and like I said regardless of where they are I will be pulling for them.

[AR3-GP]

Now that everyone has expressed concern, it wouldn't surprise me if Mclaren have the 4th fastest car.

[SmallSoldier]

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?

No one outside the team is going to know where they stand. But the McLaren body language and comments are in stark contrast to the quite confidence at Aston Martin for example. Its also unusual for the Technical Director not to appear at the launch.

To use your analogy about taking a test....if you know the class on average scores 7 out of 10 and you have not answered 4 of the 10 questions before turning in the test, you can anticipate that you are probably going to score below average compared to everyone.

My point is, saying you've left development on the table is not a good sign.

All will be revealed at the first race....and like I said regardless of where they are I will be pulling for them.

So you prefer what happened last season, with a team full of smiles after Barcelona, to only have a terrible start to the season? At that point in time a lot of fans were also reading into the team’s body language and even arguing that there was a lot more to come… I’m afraid people are reading way too much into things like James Key not been at the launch, or that Stella said that they weren’t happy since they found stronger paths of development late in the process (which is understandable since if they know there is more pace to be extract, they would have wanted to deploy it from the start of the season) and a very candid comment from him.

I believe it’s prudent to save any assessments until the first race of the season (because not even testing will give us the answers we are expecting)… I don’t expect them to be mixing it with the top 3, but to be in the fight to lead the midfield would be a real expectation and something that seems to match what the team is expecting too… Now, if one wants to make early assessments, let’s at least wait until the car runs in testing.

[Macklaren]

But the McLaren body language and comments are in stark contrast to the quite confidence at Aston Martin for example.

a) Lawrence is being roundly mocked for his "confidence" b) did you hear Fernando's comments about the first part of the season likely to be very difficult?

[SmallSoldier]

But the McLaren body language and comments are in stark contrast to the quite confidence at Aston Martin for example.

a) Lawrence is being roundly mocked for his "confidence" b) did you hear Fernando's comments about the first part of the season likely to be very difficult?

I’m afraid that isn’t my statement

[swifteddie1]

So you prefer what happened last season, with a team full of smiles after Barcelona, to only have a terrible start to the season? At that point in time a lot of fans were also reading into the team’s body language and even arguing that there was a lot more to come… I’m afraid people are reading way too much into things like James Key not been at the launch, or that Stella said that they weren’t happy since they found stronger paths of development late in the process (which is understandable since if they know there is more pace to be extract, they would have wanted to deploy it from the start of the season) and a very candid comment from him.

I believe it’s prudent to save any assessments until the first race of the season (because not even testing will give us the answers we are expecting)… I don’t expect them to be mixing it with the top 3, but to be in the fight to lead the midfield would be a real expectation and something that seems to match what the team is expecting too… Now, if one wants to make early assessments, let’s at least wait until the car runs in testing.

As I said, all will be revealed at the first race...