2024 Mclaren Formula 1 Team

[Kaluh McLaren]

So only 0.3 from pole on a new car that’s a bit of an unknown with a setup that’s not ideal but it should protect tires more on a track that doesn’t suit the car the best and some people are calling it a write off year already? Come on!!!

I’m excited for what’s to come and happy with the current position McLaren is at. It looks to me we shouldn’t jump to conclusions and see how it all develops

[BMMR61]

Emag - blame Max Mosely LOL. It's taken far too long to get back up the order but there have been lots of issues behind the scenes. $100 million just one, McLaren have been behind the 8 ball until Silverstone 2023 - if you take the incredible RedBull phenom out of the equation. We are now spending far less than Ferrari (ignore the illusion of spending cap) and challenging them hard. The gap to RedBull is shrinking. In this competitive F1 age miracle fixes are measured in a few tenths. We had an exciting day on Friday and came down to earth the next day. If you want to feel disappointed, try supporting Mercedes, a woeful position for a team that wiped the floor with everyone till 3 years ago.

Miami was always going to be a tricky place and format to introduce wholesale changes to the car. We are seeing that and the track temp and surface have added to the scenario. Where was the rain they said was likely coming? That would have been another challenge for our engineers! Wait and see how the cars go in the race and how they manage the medium/hard combination. I'm disappointed by the drop in top speeds between Friday and Saturday setups, that's a bit of a head scratcher. Anybody got an answer to that? Nice that Oscar was able to stay in the DRS zone with Sainz but Daniel probably was a factor.

We have two drivers who are the envy of most teams. Looking across at Mercedes they must have serious concerns about the demeanour of their champion driver who is making a lot of poor decisions and looking rattled. We are very hard on our drivers who are still working towards their peak.

[organic]

On Friday they ran less downforce and couldn't keep tyre temps under control..

Saturday they run more df and lose some top speed, lose a bit in the slow speed, and so aren't quite as fast on a single lap but are able to keep tyre temps under control.. to me it seems pretty standard setup tradeoffs

[FittingMechanics]

It looked good in SQ1 and SQ2 but as usual, seems McLaren is better at finding a setup in limited time. Without medium run in Q3 it is likely Norris would be P3 or similar.

But this is still a good result. Let's overtake some people in the race.

[Waz]

Blame Moseley? McLaren won a WDC the very next year. They were also really competitive right until 2013 too, when they truly lost works support. (I remember it being on a sliding scale over 3 years from 2010)

Ron Dennis was a mechanic first. Zak Brown does actually race, and has expanded McLaren Racing properly into other categories, as they should be.

This track is just bizarre, the temperature is really high, and the team have had very little data about their new package on this particular weekend.

Miami is quite an outlier in a few ways. McLaren most likely brought the upgrades here so that they could have experience with the new parts when they get to tracks that will actually suit the car (or even F1 cars in general).

The weekend is a bit of a write off, but even Red Bull don't seem their usual imperious selves.

[Mansell89]

Is it a comfortable one stop with the hard tyre this weekend or is there sufficient deg to threaten that this season? Some talk about the surface being more abrasive?

[CjC]

Well, sh*t happens bro. Go be a Ferrari fan since you hold them to such high regard. I am sure you would have enjoyed 2019 a lot, then 2020, then 2021, then 2022, then 2023 ...

Been a McLaren fan for 21 years bro. I ain’t changing now.
I don’t get what your problem is?
I don’t appreciate your assumption that I’m demanding a pole today nor your suggestion that I change alliance to Ferrari.
The fact is Mclaren have poorly executed the weekend so far and I’m just voicing my opinion, don’t like it- don’t reply to me surely? Hell even block me for all I care.

This weekend could may well be the only race of the season where Lando was the genuine fastest package and he didn’t get sprint pole, he started P9, doesn’t make it to the exit of T1 in the sprint, changes his set up which he now regrets. Facts I’m sure you are aware of. Sorry if I’m annoying you up there on your perch

It wasn't the fastest package though, was it? If they had the fastest package, it wouldn't have cooked the softs yesterday, and surely they would have been on pole today having an extra day of data.

They missjudged the setup on a sprint weekend where they also brought a raft of parts so time was precious to gather data on the package for correlation as well. Not a catastrophic mistake by any means since they likely based it off on data they had from last year, which coincidentally turned out to be a bad baseline to follow since track condition was much better last year.

And mentioning the unfortunate incident for Lando as it is somehow their fault they get taken out is bizarre.

What really icks me is the fact that you're acting as if they somehow had the fastest car by a mile and did not convert it into an easy pole and win. And that couldn't be further away from the truth.

Car started the season with significant weaknesses in low speed corners and long medium-speed corners. This track has both, on top of high temps which has been troubling them for a while.

By any account, they shouldn't have been anywhere near Ferrari and RedBull on this track. The upgrade put them closer on an unfavorable track, where it's not unreasonable to think they would have ended up with gaps similar to Bahrain without.

This was a midfield team until Austria last year. Not even a full year has passed since then. Aston Martin proved it that it's not so easy to stay at this level, yet McLaren keeps improving.

Instead of comparing them to Ferrari and RedBull and how they have been "schooled" by them, try to look into the bigger picture and understand things are not as simple as you want them to be

I mention the T1 incident because it’s basically a direct result of the poor soft tyre run in SQ3. As I said previously the sprint is now the FP2 ‘long run sim’ with points handed out after. They changed Landos car set up without any long run data which Lando admitted after qualifying was a mistake.

I talk so much about weekend execution because it all adds up.
Lando didn’t finish his soft tyre run in FP1, struggles with the soft in SQ3. Gets punted out of the sprint in P9 at T1, changes the set up for main quali, qualified P5 and wishes he could revert his set up.

I’m not acting like they had the fastest car by a mile, I’m reacting to the possibility that this weekend could be the only weekend McLaren have to fight for pole and a protection victory this season and session by session either by their own fault or not (depending on opinion) it has slipped further and further away so we have a right to feel disappointed.

My ‘schooled’ comment was just my way of describing the how far away from Red Bull we are at the moment and that Ferrari are more than likely next in line to occupy the top step once Red Bull decline kicks in.

The team is doing a good on the whole and I hope they get a chance to have a Monza 2021 scenario again sometime soon.

[CjC]

https://i.imgur.com/UmfZ1XX.png

Is it a comfortable one stop with the hard tyre this weekend or is there sufficient deg to threaten that this season? Some talk about the surface being more abrasive?

According to F1.com the hard can do 62 laps and the medium 33- I hope it’s not a 95 lap race
F1.com data it’s always the most accurate though

[LionsHeart]

https://i.imgur.com/UmfZ1XX.png

Is it a comfortable one stop with the hard tyre this weekend or is there sufficient deg to threaten that this season? Some talk about the surface being more abrasive?

According to F1.com the hard can do 62 laps and the medium 33- I hope it’s not a 95 lap race
F1.com data it’s always the most accurate though

Yes, tire wear is low here because the asphalt is smooth. It's somewhat similar to Jeddah. Pirelli confidently reports that there will be one pit stop, since this is the fastest option, which means degradation will be low.

[BMMR61]

Blame Moseley? McLaren won a WDC the very next year. They were also really competitive right until 2013 too, when they truly lost works support. (I remember it being on a sliding scale over 3 years from 2010)

Ron Dennis was a mechanic first. Zak Brown does actually race, and has expanded McLaren Racing properly into other categories, as they should be.

This track is just bizarre, the temperature is really high, and the team have had very little data about their new package on this particular weekend.

Miami is quite an outlier in a few ways. McLaren most likely brought the upgrades here so that they could have experience with the new parts when they get to tracks that will actually suit the car (or even F1 cars in general).

The weekend is a bit of a write off, but even Red Bull don't seem their usual imperious selves.

My Mosely comment was tongue in cheek, though not without substance. But there's been plenty of ploughing over the matter in years past.

We see over a weekend how small sample sizes can give incorrect assumptions and expectations. With the drivers' comments in from all the sessions we can accept that the track surface and temperatures are proving a headache for drivers and engineers, such is the unpredictability. Against this scenario McLaren are trying to get their heads around a seriously different car (in two stages of it's evolution) with limited track time.

In SQ3 Lando (and his engineer) would not haver known how sensitive the C4 tyres was to the conditions and that it's surface temperatures would so quickly go off the charts. Visual evidence at the time - Lando skates wide in the first couple of turns then struggles with huge rear end traction problems for much of the lap. Reality - not fair to blame the driver as everyone is having such issues, particularly on the C4.

Race day the C3 (medium) will be fine, degradation isn't the issue here, controlling temperature is. The updated MCL38 looks pretty good on the C3 though overtakes are hard to come by. It would be easy to say a podium from P5 will be hard, but the reality is this weekend is full of inconsistencies. Nice to see Oscar back on it after a couple of quiet weekends.

[FittingMechanics]

https://i.imgur.com/UmfZ1XX.png

Is it a comfortable one stop with the hard tyre this weekend or is there sufficient deg to threaten that this season? Some talk about the surface being more abrasive?

Team stream said before qualy that general thinking before sprint was that the race would be one stop, medium to hard, but that Tsunoda who did the sprint (19 laps) on new softs gave everyone something to think about.

I think this means that one stopper should be easy to do, maybe even soft to medium or hard.

[mwillems]

https://i.imgur.com/UmfZ1XX.png

Is it a comfortable one stop with the hard tyre this weekend or is there sufficient deg to threaten that this season? Some talk about the surface being more abrasive?

It's just hot. Taking the tyres out of their operating window will significantly reduce their lifespan. Adding DF should lower the delta teams need to run to and that is how the tyres are protected here.

[Marc.W]

I barely saw any laps, they didn't show much Mclaren, frustratingly.

You have to get F1TV. It's the only way.

In the UK? How is that?

Get yourself a VPN that blocks websites seeing your original IP (Surfshark), buy your F1TV Pro subscription from the Google Play store (with your VPN turned on to Spain) and you'll be able to watch so long as you use the VPN.

2 Year VPN subscription: £60
F1 TV Pro 2 for 2 years: £167.76

Sky with F1 channel: £49 a month minimum

F1 TV didn't show a whole lot of McLaren either though, completely ignored Lando's final lap and just mentioned the time

[Ben1980]

While maybe the team downplayed the upgrades, I have not seen any indication from them that this suddenly takes the team to the top. So, for fans to think that, based on a decent part of qualifying is a bit mad.

They've said, 2 more main upgrades to come, so, its all just part of the plan.

The sprint qualifying 3 was clearly horrendous, they had to do sonething.

[mwillems]

You have to get F1TV. It's the only way.

In the UK? How is that?

Get yourself a VPN that blocks websites seeing your original IP (Surfshark), buy your F1TV Pro subscription from the Google Play store (with your VPN turned on to Spain) and you'll be able to watch so long as you use the VPN.

2 Year VPN subscription: £60
F1 TV Pro 2 for 2 years: £167.76

Sky with F1 channel: £49 a month minimum

F1 TV didn't show a whole lot of McLaren either though, completely ignored Lando's final lap and just mentioned the time

I've got Sky (25pm), it's just that after Q1 they barely showed Mclaren. They have the onboards but I don't use them, I probably should but I tend to stick to the main feed.