2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[Macklaren]

Unless I missed it, it would be great if PhilipM could come back and share some insights from McLaren insiders -- how this resurgence was received internally, what is next up for upgrades, thoughts on the new recruits, 2024 car, Oscar etc...

[LionsHeart]

Unless I missed it, it would be great if PhilipM could come back and share some insights from McLaren insiders -- how this resurgence was received internally, what is next up for upgrades, thoughts on the new recruits, 2024 car, Oscar etc...

As in one popular site: I am such and such a person, ask questions. I imagine that the CEO will be here and write. This is Zak Brown, ask questions.

What kind of insider would you like to know? In general, the team and so in the interview give extensive information.

[LionsHeart]

I'm wondering what kind of increase in speed and lap time will the latest updates give? Will this be enough to overtake Red Bull? Zak has already spoken and Lando has said that they might have that opportunity later this year. The ability to fight for victory in the race. But for this it is not enough just to increase downforce. It is important to improve the handling and balance of the chassis, reduce tire wear over the course in order to increase the racing pace.

[mwillems]

I have already spoken about this before. According to my estimates, the remaining 25% of the updates will arrive in Zandvoort and it concerns the suspension. Next comes the upgrade to low downforce for high top speed circuits. Around Suzuka, the latest package will be available, which will include an updated body and floor.

The team is obliged to bring these updates to the track in order to test them in practice, learn a lot of new things and understand how to set up and optimize everything.

I can’t see any visual changes to the suspension being introduced this year. I’m sure updates under the skin would have been introduced several time this year already, and maybe will again, but if they do move to anti-dive it won’t be until ‘24, when they’ve properly integrated it into the chassis. Trying to retrofit would be prohibitively costly in terms of development time, cost & risk. It may bring a gain, but right now there are better routes to follow that will bring bigger rewards quicker & easier

Low downforce wings which are track specific are not really counted as upgrades in the same sense as more permanent changes, so yes I do suspect to see the RW change at Monza/Vegas, but I don’t believe that is part of what’s coming

We’ve had the Revolution, introduced around Silverstone, at some point in its conception, when acceptable gains were realised, the package would have been signed-off and put into production. At that point development of that concept would have continued, so now we have the Evolution. Not vastly different, but more refined. This is the package we can expect to see soon

Agreed on the Suspension, it seems a good chance it requires a chassis modification that would require crash testing etc, far too much for one change. And to add, Stella has spoken in a recent interview about the rear wing. It is on the to do list, and not done. This means it is not part of the remaining 25% OR the next major package which has probably now been signed off and sent for manufacturing, which we know is part of the body and the floor and it is guesswork as to whether it is part of a later package or that there is a later package, although I suspect Singapore will see something new.


He also stated that they would not be addressing the package as a whole for aero efficiency, they would look at this for next year. So whilst I enjoy LionsHeart recent input, I think this one is misguided.

[mwillems]

I'm wondering what kind of increase in speed and lap time will the latest updates give? Will this be enough to overtake Red Bull? Zak has already spoken and Lando has said that they might have that opportunity later this year. The ability to fight for victory in the race. But for this it is not enough just to increase downforce. It is important to improve the handling and balance of the chassis, reduce tire wear over the course in order to increase the racing pace.

I suppose one should look to Mika, who was not taken seriously at all with his prediction. His prediction was that by the seasons end and after a few updates, we would be as fast as Red Bull and challenge for wins, so given his inside knowledge and the fact that he was partly proved correct in the last update, I think this is the best we have to go on. Reason to be optimistic I think.

[LionsHeart]

I have already spoken about this before. According to my estimates, the remaining 25% of the updates will arrive in Zandvoort and it concerns the suspension. Next comes the upgrade to low downforce for high top speed circuits. Around Suzuka, the latest package will be available, which will include an updated body and floor.

The team is obliged to bring these updates to the track in order to test them in practice, learn a lot of new things and understand how to set up and optimize everything.

I can’t see any visual changes to the suspension being introduced this year. I’m sure updates under the skin would have been introduced several time this year already, and maybe will again, but if they do move to anti-dive it won’t be until ‘24, when they’ve properly integrated it into the chassis. Trying to retrofit would be prohibitively costly in terms of development time, cost & risk. It may bring a gain, but right now there are better routes to follow that will bring bigger rewards quicker & easier

Low downforce wings which are track specific are not really counted as upgrades in the same sense as more permanent changes, so yes I do suspect to see the RW change at Monza/Vegas, but I don’t believe that is part of what’s coming

We’ve had the Revolution, introduced around Silverstone, at some point in its conception, when acceptable gains were realised, the package would have been signed-off and put into production. At that point development of that concept would have continued, so now we have the Evolution. Not vastly different, but more refined. This is the package we can expect to see soon

Agreed on the Suspension, it seems a good chance it requires a chassis modification that would require crash testing etc, far too much for one change. And to add, Stella has spoken in a recent interview about the rear wing. It is on the to do list, and not done. This means it is not part of the remaining 25% OR the next major package which has probably now been signed off and sent for manufacturing, which we know is part of the body and the floor and it is guesswork as to whether it is part of a later package or that there is a later package, although I suspect Singapore will see something new.


He also stated that they would not be addressing the package as a whole for aero efficiency, they would look at this for next year. So whilst I enjoy LionsHeart recent input, I think this one is misguided.

We'll see after the summer break. I don't care if I'm right or not. I just care what the team brings. As for the suspension, Mercedes didn't have to crash test again to bring in anti-dive suspension. They built up carbon fiber at the rear mount of the upper suspension arm. I assumed that McLaren would go the same way.

[mwillems]

I can’t see any visual changes to the suspension being introduced this year. I’m sure updates under the skin would have been introduced several time this year already, and maybe will again, but if they do move to anti-dive it won’t be until ‘24, when they’ve properly integrated it into the chassis. Trying to retrofit would be prohibitively costly in terms of development time, cost & risk. It may bring a gain, but right now there are better routes to follow that will bring bigger rewards quicker & easier

Low downforce wings which are track specific are not really counted as upgrades in the same sense as more permanent changes, so yes I do suspect to see the RW change at Monza/Vegas, but I don’t believe that is part of what’s coming

We’ve had the Revolution, introduced around Silverstone, at some point in its conception, when acceptable gains were realised, the package would have been signed-off and put into production. At that point development of that concept would have continued, so now we have the Evolution. Not vastly different, but more refined. This is the package we can expect to see soon

Agreed on the Suspension, it seems a good chance it requires a chassis modification that would require crash testing etc, far too much for one change. And to add, Stella has spoken in a recent interview about the rear wing. It is on the to do list, and not done. This means it is not part of the remaining 25% OR the next major package which has probably now been signed off and sent for manufacturing, which we know is part of the body and the floor and it is guesswork as to whether it is part of a later package or that there is a later package, although I suspect Singapore will see something new.


He also stated that they would not be addressing the package as a whole for aero efficiency, they would look at this for next year. So whilst I enjoy LionsHeart recent input, I think this one is misguided.

We'll see after the summer break. I don't care if I'm right or not. I just care what the team brings. As for the suspension, Mercedes didn't have to crash test again to bring in anti-dive suspension. They built up carbon fiber at the rear mount of the upper suspension arm. I assumed that McLaren would go the same way.

It depends on whether the wheelbase is long enough. Our suspension is already Anti Dive, as they all have been for a long time. The RB suspensions leans forward to the wheel to achieve its goals and this disrupts the Aero as the wheel essentially moves forward a little.

if they can do this without any chassis changes then that would be great, but I'm not sure they will, but who knows.

[Seerix]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... /10505947/

I was asking about Will/Jose switching as Lando's engineer, so here's the reasoning.
They are basically teaching more personel for more roles due to large number of races yearly or in case of emergency.

[MTudor]

Huge transformation:

[AR3-GP]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... /10505947/

I was asking about Will/Jose switching as Lando's engineer, so here's the reasoning.
They are basically teaching more personel for more roles due to large number of races yearly or in case of emergency.

I find that interesting. In most of the championship winning teams, the driver and the race engineer were joined at the hip.

[FittingMechanics]

https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... /10505947/

I was asking about Will/Jose switching as Lando's engineer, so here's the reasoning.
They are basically teaching more personel for more roles due to large number of races yearly or in case of emergency.

I do think this makes sense. As they explained in the article, having people try on different "hats" allows them to better understand each other and become more effective in the long run. In the short term, it may be suboptimal but if you want your team to operate at the highest level, mutual understanding of roles and needs is essential. Not to mention that this allows new ideas to crop up.

As McLaren is not in a championship fight at the moment, this is a good time to make investments into this type of team building.

[the EDGE]

An article on McLaren's site...

What further upgrades can we expect later in the season?

The next round of upgrades will be a further development of the upgrades we took at previous races. There's still scope to go further, and we will attempt to do it. There are some encouraging indications in development, but, as always, the proof will be in the performance realised trackside.

We also need to do some more work specifically to address some of the weaknesses we had in Belgium. We had not done much work on the low drag configuration of the car, and in Belgium, we were lacking some efficiency and top speed. We want to do some urgent work on low drag, as part of a parallel smaller workstream to see if we can cash in some low-hanging fruits for Monza. This activity will be alongside what is the main development of the car, which will benefit us at the entirety of the tracks.

https://www.mclaren.com/racing/formula- ... interview/

[mwillems]

An article on McLaren's site...

What further upgrades can we expect later in the season?

The next round of upgrades will be a further development of the upgrades we took at previous races. There's still scope to go further, and we will attempt to do it. There are some encouraging indications in development, but, as always, the proof will be in the performance realised trackside.

We also need to do some more work specifically to address some of the weaknesses we had in Belgium. We had not done much work on the low drag configuration of the car, and in Belgium, we were lacking some efficiency and top speed. We want to do some urgent work on low drag, as part of a parallel smaller workstream to see if we can cash in some low-hanging fruits for Monza. This activity will be alongside what is the main development of the car, which will benefit us at the entirety of the tracks.

https://www.mclaren.com/racing/formula- ... interview/

A paralell smaller workstream? Could that be the rear wing they want to look at? Is it something else? Stella has confirmed they have the Rear Wing on the to do list for this year so it certainly sounds like it.

On another note there was an article from Pierre Wache (RB) doing the rounds talking about how surprised ("It's crazy") that after 2 years nobody has figured out their DRS trick yet..! lol

https://www.planetf1.com/news/red-bull- ... fused-drs/

Here is an article about the Red Bull RW and some of its perceived efficiencies - Caveat, this is Gary Anderson lol

https://the-race.com/formula-1/gary-and ... drs-trick/

This also reminds me of a conversation I had with someone earlier in the season who was suggesting a flatter beamwing will help energise the diffuser. According to this article and I believe this to be correct, there is a strong alignment in efficiency between the rear wing and the beam wing and then the beam wing and the diffuser and these need to operate as a package. The RB Beam wing is highly aggressive but requires the RW to operate in tandem in order for the beam wing itself to be efficient. So basically more air needs to be directed cleanly upwards by the RW and less vortices created in all situations to reduce drag on the RW but also to make the beam wing more efficient, double bonus.

I expect the team not to bring a low DF rear wing but to optimise the existing wing to improve the efficiency and produce some small changes to give the RW a cleaner profile and improve a little the geometry of the wing.

[the EDGE]

A paralell smaller workstream? Could that be the rear wing they want to look at? Is it something else? Stella has confirmed they have the Rear Wing on the to do list for this year so it certainly sounds like it.

On another note there was an article from Pierre Wache (RB) doing the rounds talking about how surprised ("It's crazy") that after 2 years nobody has figured out their DRS trick yet..! lol

https://www.planetf1.com/news/red-bull- ... fused-drs/

Here is an article about the Red Bull RW and some of its perceived efficiencies - Caveat, this is Gary Anderson lol

https://the-race.com/formula-1/gary-and ... drs-trick/

This also reminds me of a conversation I had with someone earlier in the season who was suggesting a flatter beamwing will help energise the diffuser. According to this article and I believe this to be correct, there is a strong alignment in efficiency between the rear wing and the beam wing and then the beam wing and the diffuser and these need to operate as a package. The RB Beam wing is highly aggressive but requires the RW to operate in tandem in order for the beam wing itself to be efficient. So basically more air needs to be directed cleanly upwards by the RW and less vortices created in all situations to reduce drag on the RW but also to make the beam wing more efficient, double bonus.

I expect the team not to bring a low DF rear wing but to optimise the existing wing to improve the efficiency and produce some small changes to give the RW a cleaner profile and improve a little the geometry of the wing.

Yer I read that article this morning, it certainly left me confused as I can't comprehend any trick they may have. Perhaps its just RB playing mind tricks? I can see what The Race are saying, its just a case of getting everything working well together, that is what RB does well

Back to the McLaren article... I'm very puzzled about this line

It soon became very apparent to us that Peter Prodromou was the person that needed to lead Aerodynamics.

Do they mean the man they hired to be head of Aero Wasn't leading the Aero package?

I know we all seem to think we could be armchair TPs, but come on, surely every
one who post's here know's Aerodynamics are the be all, and end all of F1 performance and should be at the sharp end of car design

It makes me kind of angry that nearly 10 years have been wasted

[BMMR61]

I read around the time the restructure took place that some inside the design team were frustrated by what they perceived as Key’s lack of reference to the aero team at a conceptual stage. My description here may not entirely do justice to the comments made but we can see that in the new structure Prodromou is strongly acknowledged for his role in the progress made. We knew last year (and earlier) that aero was not a strength of recent F1 McLarens but the extent to how quickly “low hanging fruit” have been harvested is the talk of formula one in recent weeks.

I expressed it many weeks ago that aero is 80% or so of F1 performance and how surprising the apparent blockage in team McLaren was. Further comments posted today by Andrea Stella on the team app and website reveal the extent and direction of rethinking McLaren’s design and engineering divisions. This and my perception that for the first time in two years the team seem to understand the car they are developing, gives me cause to be excited again after the performances at Monza and Sochi in 2021.