AR3-GP wrote: ↑22 Apr 2025, 23:20
BMMR61 wrote: ↑22 Apr 2025, 22:54
AR3-GP wrote: ↑22 Apr 2025, 22:21
Lamenting about not being much in it doesn’t take away that they should have dominated everything. James Allison said 2 tenths is all you need to have an easy season.
Conflating Mclarens dominance with the driver sensitivities is a mistake imo.
Anyway it’s an old discussion because teams don’t stand still in F1. The gap to Mclaren could grow or it could shrink. The future may be different to the past.
There you (and others) go again. The dominant word. It's being used by many as a weapon to say Lando, or "the drivers", or McLaren have messed up. There's plenty of evidence through a mere five races to theorise (not conclude) that the margins are fine. That there are various suitabilities of track configuration and surface and especially temperature that favour different cars, these ideas have been accepted over time, much more than just five races.
OK to say Lando has made a lot of mistakes and that he has blamed the car a lot (before backing away from that)! Oscar has been much more solid and reliable. Even Max has made mistakes, people forget that he conceded second to Oscar by running wide. Pressure. His start and turn 1 at Jeddah was a mistake, quite big mistakes which have been thrashed in the media to excuse him but Max Makes Mistakes. He is human. It may be coincidental but maybe he feels the pressure more from Oscar. Red Bull's pace has been in the car from the beginning, not always unlocked for reasons of compatibility.
My point is it is just myth to say the MCL39 is "dominant". It's good, clearly OVERALL BEST so far. George and Red Bull have been beating the drum over "dominant" and others in media and social media have followed. This isn't remotely 1988 dominant where they won all but one race often by a lap or a minute. Even that year another driver would get within a second or two and people didn't say "ah Ayrton you messed up!" If people can't see that there's an ebb or flow that can't always be pinned on the drivers or even the team. This is possibly best illustrated at Canada where the wildly fluctuating wet conditions would go from favouring Mercedes to Lando scooting away at more than a second a lap. Likewise Silverstone. I'm done defending what doesn't need defending.
You’re making it about drivers when the post that you quoted says not to conflate drivers with the car.
You’re also making the second mistake which is assuming teams stand still and that Red Bull didn’t improve their car. Red Bull had not insignificant upgrades in Bahrain and Jeddah (brake winglets, cooling system was repackaged, weight distribution changed, new underbody parts) and now they are closer. They weren’t close “all along”. They upgraded the car. Mclaren could upgrade and regain their advantage. Or they could go backwards with bad parts. I cannot see the future but it doesn’t change the past.
For some reason you and Mwillems using later and future results to rewrite the past. As in, if the TD were to shift the pecking order, you would be saying “see! Mclaren was never this or never that”. The future has nothing to do with the past. No one attempts to argue that Mclarens performance post-Miami update means they were just hiding pace that was always there before Miami in order to talk up Red Bull and play underdogs. Mclaren just wasn't that fast before Miami.
You did use the word "conflate" but It doesn't, to me at least, seem clear what you mean by it. I just have in general allowed myself to foolishly get irritated by media claims that seem more aimed at generating clicks - "McLaren dominance", "McLaren drivers wasting a great chance", and especially "McLaren are risking losing the WDC by not choosing who to support". (Not saying these are necessarily your views AR3-GP). When seasoned commentators use this latter one I get especially annoyed because even in the explosive Senna v Prost clashes it didn't bear out these theories of how to do it by armchair critic X.
I think there are many terms and ideas about F1 that don't hold great solidarity in today's F1 world. "Upgrade" when not a McLaren Austria 2023 or McLaren Miami 2024 - or something approaching that - are better described as "updates". They are within the variables of circuit and conditions and can sometimes lead to wrong directions in the short to medium term. Ferrari have had a few in the last 12 months - "upgrades" that turned out to be "updates" that seemed to work at a venue then disguised other traits. James Allison's comment about two tenths making for season dominance is either stupid or taken out of context, this amount obviously can be bleeded from one track to the next.
What has made McLaren strong and especially in going from fourth fastest to fastest in 12 months, is continuity and correlation, which leads to understanding. All important words that need to be understood and acknowledged. Performance improvements are sometimes achieved by evolving and tuning the basic car, understanding how it works under a certain framework (circuit, surface, temperature etc) and seeing the results conform to what is modelled and predicted. McLaren have been quicker this year through Fridays in getting the car into closer to optimum setup and in my opinion this is because they have followed a stronger path of understanding and correlation than all their competitors. Other teams go "WOW McLaren are untouchable" on Fridays, but the performance evolution into Saturdays and Sundays is not as great as, say, Red Bull who are very hit and miss in their understanding. It's been said McLaren must be running higher modes on Friday but this doesn't reflect the McLaren way over the last couple of seasons AND their PU reliability over a season.
Anyway I am going to take another chill pill and comfort myself that every McLaren criticism should be seen as a backward compliment of a team going well.
