BMMR61 wrote: ↑07 Mar 2024, 15:03
LionsHeart wrote: ↑07 Mar 2024, 14:53
I watched the onboard of Lando's race tonight. To be honest I wanted to sleep a lot and watched the last third of the race either with my eyes closed or slightly ajar. But even so I noticed a general trend: as long as the tyres are fresh, there are either no or minimal problems. But as soon as the tyres gradually begin to go away, there is a problem with understeer at the entrance to slow corners. It's the same chassis weakness that we had last year. That's why Mercedes are driving a bit more consistently and can get closer to McLaren towards the end of the stint.
Having said that, I'm not ready to call this lack of handling that it's due to front tyre wear. It's something else. As a rule, with McLaren it always happens, regardless of which axle is more loaded and which tyres wear faster during the race stints. Let me just say, the longer the stretch after the pitstop, the lazier the front end gets.
Yet Lando was getting closer to George later in the race until he got within about 2 seconds and the dirty air. Not saying you aren't right about this characteristic though, maybe it was highlighted on such an aggressive surface.
That's probably true. But in this case it has nothing to do with it. There was a similar characteristic of the chassis last year. The whole race Lando struggled with the front end. He even had to turn the steering wheel earlier on the entrance to Turn 14 to get exactly on the exit. But at times he turned so early that he clipped the inside kerb. He also had to turn so early that he had to countersteer, otherwise he would have hit the inside curb with his bottom. The dirty air from George was only towards the end of the race, and Lando struggled with the car almost all race alone. There was no one in his way.
Tomsky has it right above. This trait has been inherent in McLaren for a very long time. I wrote about it as far back as last year and I'm sure it was Alonso who taught the car to drive in a similar fashion. He is the one who likes understeer and knows how to tuck a lazy front end into a corner with a quick smooth steering motion. However, Alonso has been driving like this his entire racing career.
I remember the story of Webber, Button and Alonso, driving for Benetton. Jenson then pointed out that Alonso's incomprehensible crooked driving style helped him go faster. They were both amused and confused as to how it worked. There are lots of videos of Alonso's onboarding on YouTube. You can't mistake his driving style and the way he turns the steering wheel for anyone else.
