2023 - McLaren Formula 1 Team

[CjC]

Ok just watched Q1, I think the car is a top 10 car but not putting new tyres on seems to have hindered their progress through the session.
Another quali lesson for the team to be learnt it seems.
Surely It’s better to be in Q3 with no new set of tyres (iirc Pirelli hand a new set out to all drivers who reach Q3 anyway?) than to be out in Q1 with 3 new sets of tyres….

[Peter Piper]

Ok just watched Q1, I think the car is a top 10 car but not putting new tyres on seems to have hindered their progress through the session.
Another quali lesson for the team to be learnt it seems.
Surely It’s better to be in Q3 with no new set of tyres (iirc Pirelli hand a new set out to all drivers who reach Q3 anyway?) than to be out in Q1 with 3 new sets of tyres….

Yep, although I think the new tyre question was confused by needing several laps to get heat into them properly too.

[mwillems]

For such a small rear wing, their top speed is quite low.

It wasn't to do with the wing, not in that sense anyway. If you look at the speeds in the fastest laps of Q1 for those that qualified at the front of the session in Q3, you can see we are the fastest and second fastest in top speed.... Until DRS opens. And then we take a hit.

Overall we didn't lose too much time on the straights apart from to Merc. Our time was lost in the corners.

The top speed is misleading as it only represent our speed on 10% of the straights. The other 90% we are not struggling and that difference with DRS open is not what is killing us here.

[AR3-GP]

For such a small rear wing, their top speed is quite low.

It wasn't to do with the wing, not in that sense anyway. If you look at the speeds in the fastest laps of Q1 for those that qualified at the front of the session in Q3, you can see we are the fastest and second fastest in top speed.... Until DRS opens. And then we take a hit.

Overall we didn't lose too much time on the straights apart from to Merc. Our time was lost in the corners.

The top speed is misleading as it only represent our speed on 10% of the straights. The other 90% we are not struggling and that difference with DRS open is not what is killing us here.

Good point. This is a more thoughtful analysis. Still it's difficult not to correlate those cars with low top speeds to cars that will find racing difficult.

[mwillems]

[mwillems]

Note also the RPM of the Merc on these fast laps. That's a hell of a difference. Gearing? Or not needing to look after the engine?

Somehow they had a big wing and still went faster than many.

[mwillems]

For such a small rear wing, their top speed is quite low.

It wasn't to do with the wing, not in that sense anyway. If you look at the speeds in the fastest laps of Q1 for those that qualified at the front of the session in Q3, you can see we are the fastest and second fastest in top speed.... Until DRS opens. And then we take a hit.

Overall we didn't lose too much time on the straights apart from to Merc. Our time was lost in the corners.

The top speed is misleading as it only represent our speed on 10% of the straights. The other 90% we are not struggling and that difference with DRS open is not what is killing us here.

Good point. This is a more thoughtful analysis. Still it's difficult not to correlate those cars with low top speeds to cars that will find racing difficult.

To a degree that is correct, some extra k's would have snuck us into Q2 possibly. But that's it, the rest of the gap is in the corners.

But if you look at the telemetry, we gain a small amount of time to Ferrari, a reasonable amount against RB and lose to Merc, so the straights weren't too much a problem.

This is why I keep tyring to highlight in here how misleading that top speed number is, because with DRS closed this car is a slippy as any in whichever DF configuration.

[AR3-GP]

It wasn't to do with the wing, not in that sense anyway. If you look at the speeds in the fastest laps of Q1 for those that qualified at the front of the session in Q3, you can see we are the fastest and second fastest in top speed.... Until DRS opens. And then we take a hit.

Overall we didn't lose too much time on the straights apart from to Merc. Our time was lost in the corners.

The top speed is misleading as it only represent our speed on 10% of the straights. The other 90% we are not struggling and that difference with DRS open is not what is killing us here.

Good point. This is a more thoughtful analysis. Still it's difficult not to correlate those cars with low top speeds to cars that will find racing difficult.

To a degree that is correct, some extra k's would have snuck us into Q2 possibly. But that's it, the rest of the gap is in the corners.

But if you look at the telemetry, we gain a small amount of time to Ferrari, a reasonable amount against RB and lose to Merc, so the straights weren't too much a problem.

This is why I keep tyring to highlight in here how misleading that top speed number is, because with DRS closed this car is a slippy as any in whichever DF configuration.

This is going to seem roundabout, but in a way, the top speed given their wing is still the problem. The straightline performance is judged not only by how they are relative to Ferrari/RB/Merc on the straights, but also relative to how slow they are in the corners because normally there shoud be a tight correlation between losing time in the corners, and gaining it back on the straights. We have seen this with the Williams.


On the 2nd runs in Q1, Norris is only gaining ~1 tenth on the DRS straight after T12 on Ver and maybe 1.5 tenths on the non DRS straight just before. It's not massive. He's dropping 1 tenth and a bit per corner just in the 1st sector. If that's only worth 1 extra tenth on 2 straights, then it's simply not quick enough on the straights to justify the low downforce (?).

[mwillems]

Good point. This is a more thoughtful analysis. Still it's difficult not to correlate those cars with low top speeds to cars that will find racing difficult.

To a degree that is correct, some extra k's would have snuck us into Q2 possibly. But that's it, the rest of the gap is in the corners.

But if you look at the telemetry, we gain a small amount of time to Ferrari, a reasonable amount against RB and lose to Merc, so the straights weren't too much a problem.

This is why I keep tyring to highlight in here how misleading that top speed number is, because with DRS closed this car is a slippy as any in whichever DF configuration.

This is going to seem roundabout, but in a way, the top speed given their wing is still the problem. The straightline performance is judged not only by how they are relative to Ferrari/RB/Merc on the straights, but also relative to how slow they are in the corners because normally there shoud be a tight correlation between losing time in the corners, and gaining it back on the straights. We have seen this with the Williams.


On the 2nd runs in Q1, Norris is only gaining ~1 tenth on the DRS straight after T12 on Ver and maybe 1.5 tenths on the non DRS straight just before. It's not massive.

With how slow they are in the corners, you would think they should be hitting mach 7. He's dropping 1 tenth per corner just in the 1st sector. If that's only worth 1 extra tenth on 2 straights, then it's simply not quick enough to justify the low downforce.

You have a point but I'm not sure how much it alters things, just because the affect of the wing in corners is less in general due to the balance of the DF going to the floor, and because these are slower corners, lessening again the important of the wing. But I think you're right to suggest that it is a factor because it will have some impact.

Organic made a point 2 days ago, to which I wasn't convinced would be an issue, and to be fair I still don't think it is that much of a factor but it is worth mentioning again... and that is that the Ferrari wing has a lot of the load going to the DRS flap, and some of the other cars are also loading this a little more and the main plane a little less. I think that this is part of the reason we don't go mach 7 because the DRS is not releasing as much drag as it could... but at the same time, we aren't losing much on the straights against comparable wings.

One thing that stands out in this telemetry is the profile of time loss and gain in the corners. It's like we went back a few months before the updates, to the V profile corners, slow into and through the corner and excellent traction out of the corners.

So I have a feeling that Vegas is to Mclaren what Singapore was to RB, it's a track where the setup demanded is not compatible with how we need to set up the car.

[FittingMechanics]

https://i.ibb.co/3fDbTbS/VegasQ.png

Did you look at this chart the same way you look at it in FP. I know you claimed VER was much lower on engine mode but here it looks like VER is slower on the straight (early part) in a similar way. Maybe that is how they choose to deploy their battery?

My suspicion is that teams usually run the same engine modes in FP on all tracks and that it should be easy to compare.

[mwillems]

It's odd to her me arguing against a bigger wing. I just feels a different issue to what we have seen before. Watching at Austin you can see the rear squirming at 130kph in the exit of a few corners and you know that more DF would help pin the car in place at that speed. Something I was wrong on when talking with Organic was that I didn't think an updated low DF wing would be much different for us. but I think it would in hindsight. I don't think it would be the panacea though and I think we'd be a little bit better if we had a wing designed for these conditions but I don't think the wing was the issue in these corners. But since I'm not an Aero guy, I'm probably totally wrong

[mwillems]

https://i.ibb.co/3fDbTbS/VegasQ.png

Did you look at this chart the same way you look at it in FP. I know you claimed VER was much lower on engine mode but here it looks like VER is slower on the straight (early part) in a similar way. Maybe that is how they choose to deploy their battery?

My suspicion is that teams usually run the same engine modes in FP on all tracks and that it should be easy to compare.

Yes I think it was engine mode for RB, they were losing time today above 250kph when drag was starting to bite acceleration and when DRS was open they picked up, suggesting they were just being impeded by the bigger wing. Yesterday the RB speed dropped off considerably even with DRS open and their speeds on the straight were less competitive in general.

You can expect to look above 220kph more or less, depending on the wings, to see when drag is affecting the cars acceleration.

Not sure the deployment would explain it, but it would certainly be interesting to have it on the telemetry.

Edit: Modified the wording as I realise I made a bit of a hash of explaining it all, in fact I explained the opposite of what you were asking, somehow

[CjC]

Ok just watched Q1, I think the car is a top 10 car but not putting new tyres on seems to have hindered their progress through the session.
Another quali lesson for the team to be learnt it seems.
Surely It’s better to be in Q3 with no new set of tyres (iirc Pirelli hand a new set out to all drivers who reach Q3 anyway?) than to be out in Q1 with 3 new sets of tyres….

Stella seems to suggest the same
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... /10548470/

[SmallSoldier]

Let’s wait for the race… The race pace may be better than the Qualy pace and hopefully the choice for a very low DF rear wing will pay off… I’m really curious of what the strategy will be.

Been an street circuit and the walls, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is at least one safety car during the race… Go long and hope that a SC falls in a good window or be very aggressive from the go and pit earlier than most to take advantage of free air… I believe points are still on the table, hopefully it will be a fun race

[Ben1980]

Ok just watched Q1, I think the car is a top 10 car but not putting new tyres on seems to have hindered their progress through the session.
Another quali lesson for the team to be learnt it seems.
Surely It’s better to be in Q3 with no new set of tyres (iirc Pirelli hand a new set out to all drivers who reach Q3 anyway?) than to be out in Q1 with 3 new sets of tyres….

Stella seems to suggest the same
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/mcla ... /10548470/

Stella, is just so good, he is honest and explains things well.