This forum contains threads to discuss teams themselves. Anything not technical about the cars, including restructuring, performances etc belongs here.
Honestly I think it's just inexperience, Qatar was an outlier, he has never raced at any of these tracks before, reminds me of Lando in his rookie season where he was learning the car and tyres
Lando in that car is 2nd best package, just a shame the best package is o far ahead!
At the moment Red Bull is slightly better. But that can change this winter as long as we outdevelop them.
They've got to be the favourites, Red Bull, I mean. Everything is in their favour. They obviously started working their '24 car way ahead of anybody. No real issues to fix, just working on getting more performance. McLaren will probably look to start the year with as small a gap as possible and as the P2 team, but there will be a gap.
Q: (Stefano Mancini – La Stampa) Kimi, will you help Vettel to win his championship this year?
Kimi Raikkonen: I can only drive one car, obviously.
@2018 Singapore Grand Prix drivers press conference.
To be honest the paddock is relatively discouraged when it comes to hopes of catching RedBull next season. It's been known for a while now through Newey's mannerisms when asked about diminishing returns in his RedBull car (he smirked and dodged the question altogether a couple of months ago), but I believe either in Austin or Mexico some words came out that RedBull has found a lot more for their 2024 car and it was Lewis I think who mentioned it in a public interview.
So yeah, make no mistake, RedBull is the clear favorite for being the team to beat next year, and it's highly likely they can do it in a dominant fashion again. If McLaren starts strong with a car that is good enough to be the best after RedBull, then that would still be amazing for McLaren since we haven't really started a season with a car that can fight for podiums on pace since 2012.
But it's not gonna be easy. At the moment we have an edge over Mercedes and Ferrari (and that's not always the case), but next year Ferrari is coming with a completely redesigned car which, if you take rumors from the red camp, so far is delivering promising results in the wind tunnel. And Mercedes has taken the more methodical approach of slowly improving the weaknesses of their car while scrapping ideas that did not work. So next year, they are also starting with a car that is not fundamentally designed with an objectively weaker concept compared to what the rest of the grid has been following.
It's going to be a real challenge, but its time for McLaren to prove themselves. If they manage to be in the mix from the get go next year, then we know that all of these investments they have made are doing something, and then they can perhaps mount a proper challenge in 2025 or 2026.
I think all of the above is true - Red Bull has to be seen as a favorite to be dominant car next year. What does excite me however is that McLaren is finally getting two top engineers to start working on the car. This should help propel the team further forward, hopefully toward wins.
It is still crazy to think what kind of turnaround this team has had this year. Genuinely second fastest car at the end of the season.
You never know tomorrow- a well timed safety car could put us back on Max’s tail- it was unfortunate today that George took that early daring move and managed to put us outside of the DRS zone with a couple of pointless laps holding us up- excited to see our race pace on mediums tomorrow.
Do we still have a new pair of softs should a SC opportunity come with 10-15 laps to go?
I still wouldn't write off Ferrari and McLaren. I'm not sure the pace on softs was representative.
Ferrari also had cooling issues which affected their pace.
Yeah, they'll be better off tomorrow. Hoping tyre deg affects them as usual
Lando will have no problem with P2 unless the Ferraris find more than half a second overnight. Hamilton had tons of deg on the hard tyre in fp1, so I'm not sure if it's just the softs that they'll struggle with
Ferrari also had cooling issues which affected their pace.
Yeah, they'll be better off tomorrow. Hoping tyre deg affects them as usual
Lando will have no problem with P2 unless the Ferraris find more than half a second overnight. Hamilton had tons of deg on the hard tyre in fp1, so I'm not sure if it's just the softs that they'll struggle with
Pirelli suggested the Hard tyre was useless, it didn't provide enough grip to prevent it from sliding causing the deg on the hard tyre to be silly, they put this down to the surface itself. But who knows how the track will rubber in and behave tomorrow.
I still wouldn't write off Ferrari and McLaren. I'm not sure the pace on softs was representative.
Ferrari also had cooling issues which affected their pace.
Yeah, they'll be better off tomorrow. Hoping tyre deg affects them as usual
The Ferrari seems capable of getting over its tyre issues with only a small loss of pace, but they aren't really fast enough to be a threat, in a straight forward race at least.
