2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[FittingMechanics]

The penalties are consistent indeed but they have become too soft. A decade before that stunt would have costed Hamilton 5 or 10 places on the next race grid.

Today was a great example, Piastri is almost to the edge of the track, gets hit by Hamilton, loses his front wing and has to pit. So overall loses 30-40 seconds.

Hamilton gets 5 seconds which in the end means 0 points loss.
In some cases (late safety car), if you get 5 seconds you lose 10 points. It's just not consistent.

One more thing I'd like for F1 to adopt is that people that cause yellows/double yellows/red flags in qualifying should lose their best times. It would remove ability of people to crash while in P1 on some tracks (Monaco) as they would lose their time.

[mwillems]

No. I'm much happier with more fiesty racing than getting slapped wrists for looking at someone with the wrong attitude as it was a while back.When Ver came on the scene he totally change everyones view of what is exciting, and then pushed it too far consistently until he started getting penalised and now everyone has hard fair racing and occasionally you see some mistakes.

I am glad that you dont disagree. I am also in favor of good racing as long as you dont destroy the race of another cause if you do its fair game you get penalized. Also harder and more exciting fair racing existed from the days of Senna. Verstappen provided nothing new.

I do disagree, I'm fine with the penalty, it was obviously hams mistake but not a bad mistake.

If you go back to how it was people will stop racing hard for fear of mistakes.

[Darth-Piekus]

They used to race much harder than today and a mistake usually costed your life. You should never destroy someone elses race under any circumstance.

[101FlyingDutchman]

Let’s take the positives. Tyre management in hot conditions: very decent and on par if not better than most in the field.
Race pace: probably joint 3rd fastest with Mercedes.

At the start of the weekend I wasn’t expecting that. Not bad lads!

[Seerix]

Oscar on radio after Lando overtook him via undercut "Cool."
I don't get that strategy. It's 2nd time they undercut Oscar and Lando benefited. Why? Only car around was HAM on hards, it's no like he could pit or do anything, right?
Why did they pit Lando 1st and not the lead car? If they wanted to switch them, they can tell them on radio straight up. Why do it like this?

[LionsHeart]

Oscar on radio after Lando overtook him via undercut "Cool."
I don't get that strategy. It's 2nd time they undercut Oscar and Lando benefited. Why? Only car around was HAM on hards, it's no like he could pit or do anything, right?
Why did they pit Lando 1st and not the lead car? If they wanted to switch them, they can tell them on radio straight up. Why do it like this?

Who knows?

[LionsHeart]

Let’s take the positives. Tyre management in hot conditions: very decent and on par if not better than most in the field.
Race pace: probably joint 3rd fastest with Mercedes.

At the start of the weekend I wasn’t expecting that. Not bad lads!

Mercedes faster than McLaren today. McLaren have 4th clear race pace.

[Dimond]

Oscar on radio after Lando overtook him via undercut "Cool."
I don't get that strategy. It's 2nd time they undercut Oscar and Lando benefited. Why? Only car around was HAM on hards, it's no like he could pit or do anything, right?
Why did they pit Lando 1st and not the lead car? If they wanted to switch them, they can tell them on radio straight up. Why do it like this?

Tbh, Oscar's pit stop was longer by 7 tenths, which cost him the position on track. Without this delay, he would have stayed ahead of Norris. But yeah, the order of pit stops is a concern for me too... Looks like the team treats Lando as a №1 driver

[Seerix]

Oscar on radio after Lando overtook him via undercut "Cool."
I don't get that strategy. It's 2nd time they undercut Oscar and Lando benefited. Why? Only car around was HAM on hards, it's no like he could pit or do anything, right?
Why did they pit Lando 1st and not the lead car? If they wanted to switch them, they can tell them on radio straight up. Why do it like this?

Tbh, Oscar's pit stop was longer by 7 tenths, which cost him the position on track. Without this delay, he would have stayed ahead of Norris. But yeah, the order of pit stops is a concern for me too... Looks like the team treats Lando as a №1 driver

Thanks, I did not look at pit times. Lando certainly got the better strategy again.
If they want to prioritize one driver, that's fine with me, but I'd expect them to tell the other guy straight up. Not via clumsy strategy calls.
I'd like to see happy drivers and team progress, not tension building up.
It will certainly come up on the debrief, hopefully they will clear things up.

[Ben1980]

I love Andrea and his little twitter updates after the race. He really does get it.

Confirmed upgrades for Singapore.

[Seerix]

speaking of: https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/03/mcl ... ble-clash/

Stella explained the reasoning behind the team’s decision to bring Norris in first. “We pitted Lando before Oscar because Lando was the car that was most under pressure when Alonso pitted.
“It wasn’t clear as soon as Alonso would have cleared the AlphaTauri, how fast he would have been. So we wanted to make sure that we had two McLarens ahead of Alonso. So that’s why you go this kind of sequence.”

Lando came out 5s ahead of ALO after the pit.

[CjC]

speaking of: https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/03/mcl ... ble-clash/

Stella explained the reasoning behind the team’s decision to bring Norris in first. “We pitted Lando before Oscar because Lando was the car that was most under pressure when Alonso pitted.
“It wasn’t clear as soon as Alonso would have cleared the AlphaTauri, how fast he would have been. So we wanted to make sure that we had two McLarens ahead of Alonso. So that’s why you go this kind of sequence.”

Lando came out 5s ahead of ALO after the pit.

Another article for reference
https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/stell ... /10515867/

[Dafnalina]

McLaren always pits the cars under more immediate pressure first, I don't know why people are making it a big deal suddenly.
I'd understand being mad if they had given team orders when Lando was saying he was faster, but they ignored him.

Top speeds without DRS

[mwillems]

They used to race much harder than today and a mistake usually costed your life. You should never destroy someone elses race under any circumstance.

They also had Mullets for hairstyles, ridiculously tight short shorts and shirts that were made out of old peoples curtains. I don't want those days back. I prefer safe and exciting racing and not to just keep b*tching and finiding silly reasons when something goes against my team.

Because without a doubt if it happens to Norris you'll be saying how harsh the stewards are, what a ridiculous penalty, other people get away with it etc... Honestly it's the last I want to say about it, give it a rest for a change and take it on the chin instead of adding constant whining.

[mwillems]

McLaren always pits the cars under more immediate pressure first, I don't know why people are making it a big deal suddenly.
I'd understand being mad if they had given team orders when Lando was saying he was faster, but they ignored him.

Top speeds without DRS

Without DRS we were a similar pace to Albon with DRS lol We were always going to struggle to overtake anyone meaningful in this race, we just had to do the bast we can to get round. As I said before, if the car was a little faster in a straight line or a little faster in corners, we could have put more pressure and perhaps capitalised on mistakes, but the car is where it is.

But I'm happy with the points and I'm looking forward to Singapore in 2 weeks where subject to any delays we will get a car that will improve yet again.

To get past AM we need to score 12 more points than them each race in the future, and I don't think that will happen, so it looks like we just keep trying to improve this year, have some more fun and come back next year to challenge for podiums.

Team were fighting for 4th fastest by years end, it feels like right now we are 3rd fastest overall, so we are overachieving.