2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[mwillems]

Rather insightful:

https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/07/mcl ... -2024-car/

Stella has changed his tune about bringing any 2024 ideas to the 2023 car.
He was against it a few races ago now he’s open to the idea if it’s feasible.

Also he says anymore upgrades coming are only worth a tenth or 2 so we won’t see a massive leap again

Regarding the time bump:

“When we see the gap that is still missing to be able to fight for victories, you would need at least another development as big as the one that we introduced in Austria,” continued Stella. “This is at the moment not in the numbers of what we will be delivering trackside in the next couple of races.

“I would hope that we could add another like a few tenths, but this won’t be enough to challenge for victories. But hopefully it will allow us to lean on podiums a few times before the end of the season.”

Also, it is confirmed that they will do a "chassis evolution" and redo the layout of the car. I've not idea how low the centre of gravity is in this car, but it will be interesting to see what they do with the cooling as they have a bit of space in the sidepods to play with.

[Mostlyeels]

Rather insightful:

https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/07/mcl ... -2024-car/

Stella has changed his tune about bringing any 2024 ideas to the 2023 car.
He was against it a few races ago now he’s open to the idea if it’s feasible.

Also he says anymore upgrades coming are only worth a tenth or 2 so we won’t see a massive leap again

Lots of great little tidbits in there. Windtunnel working well, and improvements to aero leading to directions that the chassis needs to improve.

“Because when you put small rear wings, then you reduce the suction at the back of the floor, the floor offloads, and then the whole car kind of tends to ‘switch off’.

This echoes things I've heard (around here probably).

[mwillems]

Rather insightful:

https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/07/mcl ... -2024-car/

Stella has changed his tune about bringing any 2024 ideas to the 2023 car.
He was against it a few races ago now he’s open to the idea if it’s feasible.

Also he says anymore upgrades coming are only worth a tenth or 2 so we won’t see a massive leap again

Lots of great little tidbits in there. Windtunnel working well, and improvements to aero leading to directions that the chassis needs to improve.

“Because when you put small rear wings, then you reduce the suction at the back of the floor, the floor offloads, and then the whole car kind of tends to ‘switch off’.

This echoes things I've heard (around here probably).

Yeah if you wade through the 48 pages of rear wing discussion you'll see me and LionsHeart discussing it.

And he reiterates the point that the car suffers a little from the low DF rear wing. And this because the package as a whole isn't sufficient for it. It is the sliding scale of DF and drag. If you could make the car itself less draggy and keep the DF, or keep the drag on the car but have it create more DF for it, then you can lessen the wings for an overall net gain.

Our car, outside of the rear and front wings, is draggy however, the wing only removes a portion of the drag in comparison the likes of Williams, Ferarri and Red Bull, and probably Merc too.

What surprised me a little is that he said that the car became draggy as a result of the Austria upgrade.

it doesn't say it in this article but as part of the designs of the 24 car they will put focus on lowering the drag of the package itself as Stella has previously said that the drag is the biggest problem of the car, more so than low speed issues, but perhaps that is because they hope to remedy that a bit this weekend.

I have a feeling the drag fix will be to do with front tyre wake and how we deal with outwash, including those first three vortices of the floor which seem focussed on dealing with outwash as well as the front wing endplates as well as a more refined Sidepod.

And another thing, don't forget we have the new Tech Directive on the structure and rigidity of the front wings this weekend! Even if there is a single tenth to be found compared to those around us, it all adds up. The team are confident it doesn't impact them. I trust Stella's word on this.

[FittingMechanics]

Quite interesting article. My key takeway is not that he is against bringing 2024 developments to 2023 car but that they thought they would not work as the layout for 2024 car will change a bit. That makes sense. If the car remained relatively the same then the updates could be brought, but if you notice a bigger performance development path with a change of layout - that is what you will start to pursue at a certain moment. All very sensible.

Positive developments looking forward to 2024. Car should be able to finish the year strongly and then we can hope to have another step next year and challenge for wins (one can hope).

[Farnborough]

Rather insightful:

https://www.racefans.net/2023/09/07/mcl ... -2024-car/

Stella has changed his tune about bringing any 2024 ideas to the 2023 car.
He was against it a few races ago now he’s open to the idea if it’s feasible.

Also he says anymore upgrades coming are only worth a tenth or 2 so we won’t see a massive leap again

Lots of great little tidbits in there. Windtunnel working well, and improvements to aero leading to directions that the chassis needs to improve.

“Because when you put small rear wings, then you reduce the suction at the back of the floor, the floor offloads, and then the whole car kind of tends to ‘switch off’.

This echoes things I've heard (around here probably).

Yeah if you wade through the 48 pages of rear wing discussion you'll see me and LionsHeart discussing it.

And he reiterates the point that the car suffers a little from the low DF rear wing. And this because the package as a whole isn't sufficient for it. It is the sliding scale of DF and drag. If you could make the car itself less draggy and keep the DF, or keep the drag on the car but have it create more DF for it, then you can lessen the wings for an overall net gain.

Our car, outside of the rear and front wings, is draggy however, the wing only removes a portion of the drag in comparison the likes of Williams, Ferarri and Red Bull, and probably Merc too.

What surprised me a little is that he said that the car became draggy as a result of the Austria upgrade.

it doesn't say it in this article but as part of the designs of the 24 car they will put focus on lowering the drag of the package itself as Stella has previously said that the drag is the biggest problem of the car, more so than low speed issues, but perhaps that is because they hope to remedy that a bit this weekend.

I have a feeling the drag fix will be to do with front tyre wake and how we deal with outwash, including those first three vortices of the floor which seem focussed on dealing with outwash as well as the front wing endplates as well as a more refined Sidepod.

And another thing, don't forget we have the new Tech Directive on the structure and rigidity of the front wings this weekend! Even if there is a single tenth to be found compared to those around us, it all adds up. The team are confident it doesn't impact them. I trust Stella's word on this.

Interesting contrast to RB here, if they can't "switch" the floor off at high speed on the McL, then they are forced to run low DF rear wing to try and maintain terminal speed.
Whereas it looks like RB has the floor going substantially into stall, hence reducing drag, while then running a increase in rear wing flap to blend characteristics.
The two are in effect opposite philosophy, and possibly why there's concept direction change coming for 24 concept.

Getting a diffuser to stall at the higher speed range being the holy grail of floor driven down force vs efficiency over a wide speed range.

[mwillems]

Lots of great little tidbits in there. Windtunnel working well, and improvements to aero leading to directions that the chassis needs to improve.



This echoes things I've heard (around here probably).

Yeah if you wade through the 48 pages of rear wing discussion you'll see me and LionsHeart discussing it.

And he reiterates the point that the car suffers a little from the low DF rear wing. And this because the package as a whole isn't sufficient for it. It is the sliding scale of DF and drag. If you could make the car itself less draggy and keep the DF, or keep the drag on the car but have it create more DF for it, then you can lessen the wings for an overall net gain.

Our car, outside of the rear and front wings, is draggy however, the wing only removes a portion of the drag in comparison the likes of Williams, Ferarri and Red Bull, and probably Merc too.

What surprised me a little is that he said that the car became draggy as a result of the Austria upgrade.

it doesn't say it in this article but as part of the designs of the 24 car they will put focus on lowering the drag of the package itself as Stella has previously said that the drag is the biggest problem of the car, more so than low speed issues, but perhaps that is because they hope to remedy that a bit this weekend.

I have a feeling the drag fix will be to do with front tyre wake and how we deal with outwash, including those first three vortices of the floor which seem focussed on dealing with outwash as well as the front wing endplates as well as a more refined Sidepod.

And another thing, don't forget we have the new Tech Directive on the structure and rigidity of the front wings this weekend! Even if there is a single tenth to be found compared to those around us, it all adds up. The team are confident it doesn't impact them. I trust Stella's word on this.

Interesting contrast to RB here, if they can't "switch" the floor off at high speed on the McL, then they are forced to run low DF rear wing to try and maintain terminal speed.
Whereas it looks like RB has the floor going substantially into stall, hence reducing drag, while then running a increase in rear wing flap to blend characteristics.
The two are in effect opposite philosophy, and possibly why there's concept direction change coming for 24 concept.

Getting a diffuser to stall at the higher speed range being the holy grail of floor driven down force vs efficiency over a wide speed range.

That's really interesting thanks, I didn't realise that could be the issue but it could very well be. To be honest I thought it was more likely to be to do with outwash and tyre wake.

What elements of the car help the floor to stall at high speed, is the weakening of the seal of the floor? And how do they prevent this in high speed corners?

[Farnborough]

I suppose it's really for car comparison thread, but will use RB here as it's, of course, their target to beat and access the top levels of podium.

Pre 2022, the RB was (relatively) high downforce floor and used a tiny rear wing at Monza in balancing this. But new era has given facility to fundamentally alter the floor performance profile given all the geometry under there.

Fascinating to me was that RB chassis in the wet at Zandvoort, you could see it switching from diffuser at low speed to outwash at mid chassis for high speed. (I commented on the RB 19 thread, but nobody picked it up to comment) With the obvious "toggle" of rear ride height being head of suspect in this regard for my thinking.

In other words, that floor geometry gets to the point of stall and likely to be influenced by rear ride height/static/spring rate etc to control how that interaction is placed within each specific circuit characteristic.

It seems to produce big load at low to moderate speed range (contrast McL low speed limitations) but then goes on to not keep accumulation of negative pressure and attendant drag as speed rises. The high speed load at rear appears to be primarily the wing. The two would seem to run consecutively, rather than floor accumulation linear, plus the wing in vertically stacked response of McL
This appears to force McL design team to cap the abdolute floor negative pressure in response to top speed, and then suffer too little low speed load from either element to fully round out the chassis performance of such a range.

When running higher overall load the McL chassis appears to work the rear tires harder (demonstration of total load going through them) also benefits from the more durable tire as it can now squeeze that carcass into flex and it's optimum range. Take that rear wing away at a Monza though, and those rears (especially the harder choice) can no longer be flexxed, this resulted in sub optimum rear tire use and grip compared to their immediate competitors.

They were caught between two hard choices for setup, wing less for speed OR wing for load and be overtaken on straights.

Don't think they could have done much else though, but feel it demonstration of floor understanding for them, and maybe their core focus in next yrs chassis.

This chassis appers the most closely related to that RB in it's mechanical elements, but fundamentally opposed in floor design philosophy. If they've got the right view of their shortcomings, and appreciate exactly what the other team is doing it looks quite promising in my view.

[mwillems]

It does look like mechanically the car is sound but has issues with generating sufficient DF at low speeds I'd previously thought might be related to how the car is conditioning the airflow in the different pitch/yaw/wheel angle and deformation. I still think this might be the case due to the fact we get these issues when also following a car. I hadn't thought too much about the drag and certainly didn't consider the floor sealing as the culprit, but it is interesting to consider how those geometries of the strakes can help the floor stall at various ride heights, because of course the larger final channel/strake which sets up the vortex that does the main job of sealing the floor can be designed to increase the trait of it being less effective at height that it already would be.

You can see the way the strake tries to energise the vortex but creates what appears to be quite a large flow coming from the strake that in fact this might be too large for the ride heights that we run at. So one assumes you don't want too large a body of pressure coming away from here but to still maintain the strength with which the floor is sealed and that the behaviour of this vortex needs to be generated in such a way as it works nicely with the way the car sits on the ground, not just in rake but also how flat and stable the car is able to be in corners.

The car is scheduled to have a new floor at Singapore and it is supposed to help the cars all round performance and in Stellas words "make the car competitive even at low speeds".

It would be wonderful if we get the chance to compare the old and new floor geometries at some point.

Thanks for that, I've learnt something today that for someone who was half intelligent might have been quite obvious, but to me wasn't

We are of course yet to see what the issue is but this was certainly a really useful explanation, thanks.

[BMMR61]

Lots of great little tidbits in there. Windtunnel working well, and improvements to aero leading to directions that the chassis needs to improve.



This echoes things I've heard (around here probably).

Yeah if you wade through the 48 pages of rear wing discussion you'll see me and LionsHeart discussing it.

And he reiterates the point that the car suffers a little from the low DF rear wing. And this because the package as a whole isn't sufficient for it. It is the sliding scale of DF and drag. If you could make the car itself less draggy and keep the DF, or keep the drag on the car but have it create more DF for it, then you can lessen the wings for an overall net gain.

Our car, outside of the rear and front wings, is draggy however, the wing only removes a portion of the drag in comparison the likes of Williams, Ferarri and Red Bull, and probably Merc too.

What surprised me a little is that he said that the car became draggy as a result of the Austria upgrade.

it doesn't say it in this article but as part of the designs of the 24 car they will put focus on lowering the drag of the package itself as Stella has previously said that the drag is the biggest problem of the car, more so than low speed issues, but perhaps that is because they hope to remedy that a bit this weekend.

I have a feeling the drag fix will be to do with front tyre wake and how we deal with outwash, including those first three vortices of the floor which seem focussed on dealing with outwash as well as the front wing endplates as well as a more refined Sidepod.

And another thing, don't forget we have the new Tech Directive on the structure and rigidity of the front wings this weekend! Even if there is a single tenth to be found compared to those around us, it all adds up. The team are confident it doesn't impact them. I trust Stella's word on this.

Interesting contrast to RB here, if they can't "switch" the floor off at high speed on the McL, then they are forced to run low DF rear wing to try and maintain terminal speed.
Whereas it looks like RB has the floor going substantially into stall, hence reducing drag, while then running a increase in rear wing flap to blend characteristics.
The two are in effect opposite philosophy, and possibly why there's concept direction change coming for 24 concept.

Getting a diffuser to stall at the higher speed range being the holy grail of floor driven down force vs efficiency over a wide speed range.

Yes, it was speculated quite some months ago that Red Bull had found a way to stall the diffuser which was giving unbelievable top speeds and DRS effect without costing downforce. Clearly McLaren have kind of 'hit the wall' with low DF configurations since Spa, I suspect they have a good understanding why but have run out of time to develop that part of the car. At Silverstone McLaren were able to achieve excellent high speed corner grip meaning exit speeds were more determinate of top speeds than sheer slipperiness.

The sharing of some of the new (2024) parts in coming races signalled by Andrea is a clear sign that the next car is rather evolutionary - testament to the amount of understanding of the car's dynamics and the effects of upgrades, particularly since Austria. I'm quite encouraged by this news. It doesn't mean the 2024 car won't have major changes conceptually, and that elements of sidepods/underfloor are probably currently heading in a direction to the team's satisfaction.

[organic]

So the parts coming soon are 2024 parts? Makes sense how they can justify it in that case

[mwillems]

So the parts coming soon are 2024 parts? Makes sense how they can justify it in that case

I don't think I've seen that anywhere, I don't believe they are 2024 parts per se.

[FittingMechanics]

So the parts coming soon are 2024 parts? Makes sense how they can justify it in that case

I don't think I've seen that anywhere, I don't believe they are 2024 parts per se.

Stella said they have some new developments in works for 2024 and if they see that they can make them work on 2023 car, they will bring them over, but there is question of costs and if the development is sufficiently advanced.

This is the quote from the article.

Some work being done on the MCL60’s successor could be brought forward to this year’s car, said Stella.

“There’s a couple of areas that you can develop on next year’s car [in the wind tunnel], and think like if they are successful, should we release them for this year’s car?” he said.

“I don’t want to say which areas, but definitely there’s a couple of areas in which we have this approach towards the development. In that case, we’ll have to look at can we afford that because it will go beyond what we had planned from a budget point of view. So it will depend on the cost, it will depend on the project being mature enough.”

[basti313]

I think part of it may be that Ganassi had option rights for Indycar, but not for F1.

Now Palou seems to be breaking the contract with McLaren because he sees that his path to F1 probably closed with Piastri doing well.

I hope that the team improves even further next year and that Palou regrets his decision.

Or he sees that OWard came to McLaren with the same F1 carrot in front of his face? And is today without title hopes in Indy and no hope at all on the F1 seat?

[mwillems]

So the parts coming soon are 2024 parts? Makes sense how they can justify it in that case

I don't think I've seen that anywhere, I don't believe they are 2024 parts per se.

Stella said they have some new developments in works for 2024 and if they see that they can make them work on 2023 car, they will bring them over, but there is question of costs and if the development is sufficiently advanced.

This is the quote from the article.

Some work being done on the MCL60’s successor could be brought forward to this year’s car, said Stella.

“There’s a couple of areas that you can develop on next year’s car [in the wind tunnel], and think like if they are successful, should we release them for this year’s car?” he said.

“I don’t want to say which areas, but definitely there’s a couple of areas in which we have this approach towards the development. In that case, we’ll have to look at can we afford that because it will go beyond what we had planned from a budget point of view. So it will depend on the cost, it will depend on the project being mature enough.”

Yes but Organic was suggesting the Singapore update (I think) was from the 24 car and I don't think it is. This is the last planned update that I am aware of so anything that comes afterwards you can assume comes from the development of the 24 car.

I am hoping that the tunnel as able to give some immediate insight that adds to the teams knowledge and that there may be some low hanging fruit for this car. but really this year is just a development year and I don't thin it matters much, other than for validating the parts for next year.

[Farnborough]

"Yes, it was speculated quite some months ago that Red Bull had found a way to stall the diffuser which was giving unbelievable top speeds and DRS effect without costing downforce"

There's relevant and quite an old story about the Williams F08 chassis, in that they had a truck load of floor downforce that almost "peeled the tarmac up" at maximum velocity, only to experiment with a venturi tunnel "baffle" ? That instantly gave something like 1.5 seconds reduced lap time. They were all surprised at what such a simple shift had achieved.

It's certainly a very relevant topic to these team chasing that lead car.

The high peaks of performance like Silverstone serves to give direction too. Like a jigsaw puzzle as the pieces slowly make a picture whole, each valid step helps to define the next direction as experience of that level fully soaks into thinking and operating the chassis in amongst it's competitors.

Interesting to see the direction coming together on a technical level.