2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[McFAN]

Unfortunately on a forum there will be a variety of opinions.

Not unfortunate,
it's what we join these forums for

[MrGapes]

I have to stay just from initial onboards there is still that mid corner understeer that we see quite often in the slower to med corners (its certainly better than last year), although compare that to the Aston onboard, that car looks like a peach, the throttle application they have mid corner is impressive.

[101FlyingDutchman]

Hopefully that gets solved with their race 4 update. My initial hunch on this car seems correct. It’s a decent fast car but needs updates to finally close the gap to what I see as the top 4 as AMR looks like it may well have made a very decent step. On average 0.2s loss per sector to the front runners

[Darth-Piekus]

Well seems that Lando has given us something positive to discuss. Lando was on C3. What tyres were those in front?

[MrGapes]

Well seems that Lando has given us something positive to discuss. Lando was on C3. What tyres were those in front?

C3 aswell

[organic]

Well seems that Lando has given us something positive to discuss. Lando was on C3. What tyres were those in front?

C3 aswell

Which is the soft tyre at Bahrain so makes sense they're using them for quali sims

[Lucky]

[mwillems]

On Dutch tv the commentator just said he was talking to the McLaren press chief yesterday whom said McLaren know the car is not where it should be for the start of the season but that a big update is planned to address the car’s shortcomings.

This is known, Stella has already spoken about the front wing development that is able to better deal with the deforming of the tyres.

[mwillems]

Everyone is a world class Technical Director, Engineer etc. Guys saying "it's unacceptable, it should never happen". Nobody on here is 100% certain what the problem is, "but it should never happen", because it doesn't happen to Tony Stark. Sometimes this place us worse than football twitter.

Not sure what is the problem? Should we say good work, it is really good to sit for 2 hours in the box with the glue gun trying to make the car work?

It is a mistake, it should not happen.

No, just don't hit the panic button.

[McL-H]

Hopefully that gets solved with their race 4 update. My initial hunch on this car seems correct. It’s a decent fast car but needs updates to finally close the gap to what I see as the top 4 as AMR looks like it may well have made a very decent step. On average 0.2s loss per sector to the front runners

If Aston Martin has actually closed the gap to the top 3, all our endless excuses about not having up-to-date facilities holding us back can go straight into the bin.

[Lucky]

Laps completed by each driver on Day 1:

157 Verstappen
85 de Vries
83 Hamilton
75 Sargeant
74 Albon
72 Sainz
71 Bottas
69 Russell
67 Zhou
64 Leclerc
60 Gasly, Alonso
57 Magnussen
53 Ocon
52 Piastri
51 Hulkenberg
46 Tsunoda
40 Norris, Drugovich

[mwillems]

On Dutch tv the commentator just said he was talking to the McLaren press chief yesterday whom said McLaren know the car is not where it should be for the start of the season but that a big update is planned to address the car’s shortcomings.

it could just mean they found some good gains that they couldn't exploit in time for testing.
We live in hope

It is exactly this. The statement Stella made in the recent past is they are happy with the car overall but there is more to be done as they found some strong gains to be made on the front end, but it was quite late in the development to be able to utilise it. Baku was the race scheduled for its introduction.

The disappointment that people referred to in the past was that Stella seemed to suggest that they found if too late, suggesting they should have seen it sooner.

[Lucky]

Hopefully that gets solved with their race 4 update. My initial hunch on this car seems correct. It’s a decent fast car but needs updates to finally close the gap to what I see as the top 4 as AMR looks like it may well have made a very decent step. On average 0.2s loss per sector to the front runners

If Aston Martin has actually closed the gap to the top 3, all our endless excuses about not having up-to-date facilities holding us back can go straight into the bin.

Aston uses Mercedes wind tunnel

[101FlyingDutchman]

Hopefully that gets solved with their race 4 update. My initial hunch on this car seems correct. It’s a decent fast car but needs updates to finally close the gap to what I see as the top 4 as AMR looks like it may well have made a very decent step. On average 0.2s loss per sector to the front runners

If Aston Martin has actually closed the gap to the top 3, all our endless excuses about not having up-to-date facilities holding us back can go straight into the bin.

Too early to tell. Convergence will happen. Remember getting Fallows in who was a key member in RB18 is obviously a huge plus for fast tracked development. That shouldn’t be underestimated. I honestly believe we are on the right track and have the team in place factory and r&d wise. I’d rather be an optimist than an eternal pessimist. Fine margins which will decide and unfortunately a state of the art wind tunnel is required for that final step

[organic]

Hopefully that gets solved with their race 4 update. My initial hunch on this car seems correct. It’s a decent fast car but needs updates to finally close the gap to what I see as the top 4 as AMR looks like it may well have made a very decent step. On average 0.2s loss per sector to the front runners

If Aston Martin has actually closed the gap to the top 3, all our endless excuses about not having up-to-date facilities holding us back can go straight into the bin.

Too early to tell. Convergence will happen. Remember getting Fallows in who was a key member in RB18 is obviously a huge plus for fast tracked development. That shouldn’t be underestimated. I honestly believe we are on the right track and have the team in place factory and r&d wise. I’d rather be an optimist than an eternal pessimist. Fine margins which will decide and unfortunately a state of the art wind tunnel is required for that final step

Fallows wasn't even working on RB18 much iirc. He was moved to the RB advanced technology division for a while before 2022