2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

[BMMR61]

Did the team perform a shakedown?

Strangely seems there are no spy shots. Only stuff McLaren released which is hand picked to not reveal anything.

There were a few reflections of the car caught on video, but not that you can make out much from the reflections.
McLaren are in full expectation management mode, not overhyping the car. Just quietly confident. If the car is fast enough to challenge Red Bull, the headlines for McLaren will be quite pleasing from a marketing perspective.

Sounds like we probably won't see the race spec car until FP1 (see car thread).

Once upon a time the first European round would be highly anticipated as where the first really significant upgrades would show up. I think the Netflix generation has generated more unnecessary hype surrounding the launch, the shakedown and official testing. And now the preseason testing has been pared down to just three days the potential for the first real upgrades becomes crucially important, especially if your team missed the trends etc.

I'm betting, with the potential for egg on my face, that McLaren will have a pretty smooth move into the new car at round 1 and be Red Bull's closest challenger. Reason being the 38 is an evolution of the 60 with a new platform they identified long before work actually began on the car. When you are getting gains which match, or even exceed the simulations the chances of hitting a developmental brick wall are much lower. My jibe about Mercedes was I saw exactly the scenario of a team that is flailing around because there is no longer an evolutionary path that is working. McLaren are odds on to not be in that camp. The crowd - even some experienced pundits - are disappointed in the lack of obvious, even radical changes to the car.

[M840TR]

It's remarkable that despite the new facilities they haven't moved from the philosophy of producing an underdeveloped car and banking on in-season upgrades to rescue some pace. The team must know something we don't according to the confident statements, but by all accounts the car seems very agricultural compared to the rest, and it's difficult to argue that staying with this methodology will help them win any titles let alone races...

They are clearly hiding changes to the front of the car, except for the new suspension as that is pretty hard to hide. The fences have been obfuscated in the digitally altered photos and if we update the suspension and the fences but not the FW then I'll eat the not insubstantial kitty litter that belongs to my two overweight cats.

Those changes alone are pretty substantial. We don't really get to see much at the rear of the car or the floor either. So what is left in terms of big changes apart from the sidepods from a visual standpoint? Almost Nothing. And then we don't know if the internal cooling layout has reduced drag... We learnt very little today.

Totally open to critisism as in the past the team has deserved it and this is an open forum after all. But I'm surprised you think we've had much "revealed" to us yet to be quiet honest and I think you are jumping the gun somewhat.

I was referring more to what Stella said, that most of the developments on the key areas will be brought to the car only later in the season. This is not just the car being visually underdeveloped, but the team itself admitting to that fact.

I'm not saying that the season is over because of this, of course. But the point stands that you can't challenge for wins if you always start with a relatively slow and underdeveloped car. There's no excuse for starting on the back foot either, given they carried over the same concept from last year, had extra wind-tunnel time compared to others and now have all the new facilities fully operational too. Yet for some reason the calender in MTC always begins at April, May or June.

[FittingMechanics]

I was referring more to what Stella said, that most of the developments on the key areas will be brought to the car only later in the season. This is not just the car being visually underdeveloped, but the team itself admitting to that fact.

I don't think you are right in that conclusion. The way I understood Stella, they have other things that are in development that need time to mature before they bring them to the car but at the same time he said they addressed all three key areas they wanted to.

This may be other ideas they want to develop but at the moment the gains they predict are not big enough or the idea is not refined enough to manufacture it. This is the age of cost cap and manufacturing physical parts is expensive.

[diffuser]

Im hearing that Ferrari tries to obtain Pierre Vas from Red Bull. The press mentions that he had a bigger impact on the last two Red Bull cars than even Andrian Newey. What is your opinion of Mclaren getting him first?

Everyone was the next Newey (at some point): Peter Prodromou, James Key, Dan Fallows, ...

Individuals alone don't do anything.

Newey was at RBR when Merc won all those championships right ? If you don't blame Newey for losing all those years, not sure why you'd blame Prodromou for the Honda and Renault years? As for Fallows, it took Newey 4 years to get RBR competitive? Last year was Fallows first or second full year at Aston ? You could argue that AMR were competitive. Newey is just one piece of the puzzle, he's a big piece but still just 1 piece. All these guys need a team, the money and the right equipment around them to be successful.

[Emag]

Regardless on how developed or not the car the looks, by making the comments they have made and the general feeling of the team, this year they are kind of putting themselves on the line when it comes to backlash if they don't deliver by starting the season strong.

Unlike previous years when expectations were shot down by them, this time around disappointment and criticism would be completely justified if they don't deliver.
And given the pressure that they have to deliver (Zak has been building up this season as the first real season in which McLaren has no excuses if it doesn't challenge for victories), I doubt they would make such claims if they weren't at least slightly overconfident in what the data is showing so far.

So instead of continuing the discussion on how little visual changes there seem to be on the car, I think we should switch our focus towards on-track performance. That starts with productive and problem-free testing next week before the real challenge comes on the first race weekend.

The car is bound to have some changes, either on testing, or race 1, or a couple of races into the season. But that doesn't really matter at the end of the day if the car is performing well. We should perhaps remember, that the launch spec RB19 also did not have drastic bodywork changes compared to Abu Dhabi spec RB18, but we all know what that car did to the competition last year.

So really, that first race performance will set the trend for the rest of the season. If they start on the back foot, I am afraid this time around it won't be as "easy" as last year to find something that will propel them to the front again. But if they do start strong, then there's even more reason for excitement considering all these "projects" that are under development (as per andrea's words)

[Macklaren]

The fences have been obfuscated in the digitally altered photos and if we update the suspension and the fences but not the FW then I'll eat the not insubstantial kitty litter that belongs to my two overweight cats.

I'm willing to sacrifice the Bahrain result - heck even the first 1/3rd of the championship - just to see this. Bonus points for video with the cats looking on...

[FittingMechanics]

Big interview with Stella https://www.mclaren.com/racing/formula- ... o-round-1/

After installing a couple of major upgrades at last year’s Austrian Grand Prix, we enjoyed a decent step forward in our performances and Andrea says the team are targeting “this same gradient of development over time.”

“The development seems to be going on a similar trajectory to what we had for the Austria and Singapore upgrades,” he says. “But obviously, when you work on development for a new car, you spend many months without being able to see the behaviour of the car on track.

“You do all the due diligence so that when the car actually hits the ground it will correlate to your development tools as well as possible. So far, the indications are encouraging, but the answers will come once we have the car on the ground in pre-season testing."

[billamend]

Newey was at RBR when Merc won all those championships right ? If you don't blame Newey for losing all those years, not sure why you'd blame Prodromou for the Honda and Renault years? As for Fallows, it took Newey 4 years to get RBR competitive? Last year was Fallows first or second full year at Aston ? You could argue that AMR were competitive. Newey is just one piece of the puzzle, he's a big piece but still just 1 piece. All these guys need a team, the money and the right equipment around them to be successful.

I'm not blaming anyone. At all.

[diffuser]

Newey was at RBR when Merc won all those championships right ? If you don't blame Newey for losing all those years, not sure why you'd blame Prodromou for the Honda and Renault years? As for Fallows, it took Newey 4 years to get RBR competitive? Last year was Fallows first or second full year at Aston ? You could argue that AMR were competitive. Newey is just one piece of the puzzle, he's a big piece but still just 1 piece. All these guys need a team, the money and the right equipment around them to be successful.

I'm not blaming anyone. At all.

I took the "Everyone was the next Newey (at some point): Peter Prodromou, James Key, Dan Fallows, ...

Individuals alone don't do anything." to meaning that haven't succeeded yet so they're not as good as Newey. I'm just saying you need everything to make it work, not just the man.

[mwillems]

It's remarkable that despite the new facilities they haven't moved from the philosophy of producing an underdeveloped car and banking on in-season upgrades to rescue some pace. The team must know something we don't according to the confident statements, but by all accounts the car seems very agricultural compared to the rest, and it's difficult to argue that staying with this methodology will help them win any titles let alone races...

They are clearly hiding changes to the front of the car, except for the new suspension as that is pretty hard to hide. The fences have been obfuscated in the digitally altered photos and if we update the suspension and the fences but not the FW then I'll eat the not insubstantial kitty litter that belongs to my two overweight cats.

Those changes alone are pretty substantial. We don't really get to see much at the rear of the car or the floor either. So what is left in terms of big changes apart from the sidepods from a visual standpoint? Almost Nothing. And then we don't know if the internal cooling layout has reduced drag... We learnt very little today.

Totally open to critisism as in the past the team has deserved it and this is an open forum after all. But I'm surprised you think we've had much "revealed" to us yet to be quiet honest and I think you are jumping the gun somewhat.

I was referring more to what Stella said, that most of the developments on the key areas will be brought to the car only later in the season. This is not just the car being visually underdeveloped, but the team itself admitting to that fact.

I'm not saying that the season is over because of this, of course. But the point stands that you can't challenge for wins if you always start with a relatively slow and underdeveloped car. There's no excuse for starting on the back foot either, given they carried over the same concept from last year, had extra wind-tunnel time compared to others and now have all the new facilities fully operational too. Yet for some reason the calender in MTC always begins at April, May or June.

Can you post a link to that quote so I can be on the same page? I don't think I ever saw him say the car was under developed.

I've seen him say not everything was completed and arrived for Yesterday, did he say how late they were or how many projects or parts were late? I'm conscious that they haven't been given a chance to bring parts to testing, to the first race or to reveal what they may be hiding at this point, let alone think about April, May or June. Or that we don't know how much is being hidden from us right now, or just how much has not arrived to the car in terms of parts or time.

Obviously there's a lot that has gone on under the skin and Stella already warned us that a good portion of the updates were under the skin and not visible.

https://www.planetf1.com/news/mclaren-i ... challenger

“So there will be some visible elements of almost discontinuity with the past.

“But for the bulk, most of the improvement from an aerodynamic efficiency point of view, mechanical grip, interaction with the tyres, it will come from many details that not necessarily will be so clearly visible.”

For an understanding of where he thinks the speed is:
https://racer.com/2024/02/14/mclaren-de ... ll-stella/

...but in his press release quotes Stella warned some innovations were not ready for the launch specification of car. As a result, he believes the gap to Red Bull will be tough to instantly close, but is bridgeable over the course of the year given the development rate McLaren has been on up to now.

“I think at the start of the season my expectation is that Red Bull will keep enjoying some advantage,” Stella said. “I say this because they didn’t develop the car very much last year, and I would think it’s reasonable to expect that they will have accumulated some knowledge and development last year that will be capitalized on to the 2024 car. That’s my expectation.

This suggests to me that he expects them to have found a lot of time but that we will still maintain our competitive position relative to RB with a view to removing their advantage with upgrades.

That said, I think that looking at ourselves, if — and I say if — we keep the development rate that we had in 2023…then I think we can be in a strong position.

“Whether that’s enough to challenge Red Bull and the other top teams, who certainly will have made good improvements, we will find out. We think this is a strong development rate, but as I said now it’s up to us to try and consolidate over time.”

You may turn out to be right, but I just think it is a bit early to be reading underdeveloped right now

[SmallSoldier]

We also seem to dismiss the amount of time it takes to produce parts… New parts aren’t build overnight… Most of what we are seeing on the cars at launch was probably started 4-6 weeks ago from a manufacturing perspective, if that is the case, they finished W/T simulations on those parts early this year or even last year, which means that design / CFD was performed last year for some of the parts we are seeing “Today”.

In addition, as has been said before, in this budget cap era you can’t produce iterations of parts as often as before… If they are still finding time by tweaking / iterating designs, they will probably wait until they see some diminishing returns before they sign off on those parts for actual production and track use and if that’s the reason for the parts to be “late”, that’s very encouraging.

[FittingMechanics]

Big interview with the drivers



Both are very very confident. I think they fully expect to have closed the gap to Red Bull, I'd say they expect to fight Red Bull.

The data has to be extremely good.

[BMMR61]

We also seem to dismiss the amount of time it takes to produce parts… New parts aren’t build overnight… Most of what we are seeing on the cars at launch was probably started 4-6 weeks ago from a manufacturing perspective, if that is the case, they finished W/T simulations on those parts early this year or even last year, which means that design / CFD was performed last year for some of the parts we are seeing “Today”.

In addition, as has been said before, in this budget cap era you can’t produce iterations of parts as often as before… If they are still finding time by tweaking / iterating designs, they will probably wait until they see some diminishing returns before they sign off on those parts for actual production and track use and if that’s the reason for the parts to be “late”, that’s very encouraging.

All very true. I think the staged rounds of new parts which were so evidently effective for McLaren last year are planned into 2024, how much this (planned rollout) is a facet of other teams' thinking I am interested to hear opinions here.

Obviously as fans we don't want to be hearing any repeat of the 2023 and 2022 late starts this year. We were told that all development of MCL60 components ceased around early August 2023 and work on the new car was in full swing - generally regarded as sufficient lead time. With the introduction of new components (in season) I imagine a certain amount of validation of on track performance is a reliable way of maintaining understanding of how these components interact - understanding your car was a strong feature of McLaren last year and hopefully will be so in 2024 and beyond.

[Macklaren]

Big interview with the drivers



Both are very very confident. I think they fully expect to have closed the gap to Red Bull, I'd say they expect to fight Red Bull.

The data has to be extremely good.

I wonder if Rob Marshall - who knows the Red bull data very well - saw their data and said, wow you're not far with the 38 (including any RB20 gains) which gives them that confidence

[SmallSoldier]

We also seem to dismiss the amount of time it takes to produce parts… New parts aren’t build overnight… Most of what we are seeing on the cars at launch was probably started 4-6 weeks ago from a manufacturing perspective, if that is the case, they finished W/T simulations on those parts early this year or even last year, which means that design / CFD was performed last year for some of the parts we are seeing “Today”.

In addition, as has been said before, in this budget cap era you can’t produce iterations of parts as often as before… If they are still finding time by tweaking / iterating designs, they will probably wait until they see some diminishing returns before they sign off on those parts for actual production and track use and if that’s the reason for the parts to be “late”, that’s very encouraging.

All very true. I think the staged rounds of new parts which were so evidently effective for McLaren last year are planned into 2024, how much this (planned rollout) is a facet of other teams' thinking I am interested to hear opinions here.

Obviously as fans we don't want to be hearing any repeat of the 2023 and 2022 late starts this year. We were told that all development of MCL60 components ceased around early August 2023 and work on the new car was in full swing - generally regarded as sufficient lead time. With the introduction of new components (in season) I imagine a certain amount of validation of on track performance is a reliable way of maintaining understanding of how these components interact - understanding your car was a strong feature of McLaren last year and hopefully will be so in 2024 and beyond.

Based on what has been stated by Stella, my thought process is that they have continued to find time in the latest iterations of parts… It doesn’t make any sense to produce parts that provide “80%” of performance early if they know the next iteration can give them more performance… That’s why it’s not surprising that not all parts are ready for the launch or even testing.

This would be a very different situation compared to last year, when the development process “started” during the winter break and therefore due to development, validation and production times, they were actually “late” into the process… In this case it’s more a situation of finding more performance from the different concepts and therefore extending the development and validation time for as long as possible, not only from a performance perspective, but also from a budget cap perspective.

Been said that, I wouldn’t expect the car even as showed in the launch to have the issues that plagued the MCL60, that in itself was an underdeveloped car… The MCL38 even in it’s “unfinished” form is an evolution of the MCL60 and therefore it’s performance would be expected to be equal or better than the car that raced in Abu Dhabi.

Is this enough for a strong start of the season? It will depend on how much time the first race spec of the competition has found… But all signs are encouraging, if the pack leader (Red Bull) has changed from an underbite concept on their sidepod intakes to an overbite is probably because they know it’s better than previous year… While everyone else (AMR, Ferrari for example) are still pursuing that concept, McLaren has already identified the same next step on the evolution and at least from a concept perspective, in the same path as Red Bull, which bodes well even for a the start of the season.