McLaren’s Surprise Gains Boost F1 Team’s Competitiveness
The McLaren Formula 1 team has been left slightly puzzled by the unexpectedly strong performance of its MCL38 car following a major development step introduced at the Miami Grand Prix.
The Woking-based squad’s updates have helped drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri secure impressive results, with Norris claiming his maiden F1 victory in Miami and Piastri finishing as the runner-up in last weekend’s race in Monaco.
Unexpected Performance Boost
While McLaren is delighted that the upgrades have lifted the team’s competitiveness, allowing it to challenge for race wins, team principal Andrea Stella admitted they have been surprised by the extent of the gains.
“What we see and what we expected is just more downforce in all conditions,” explained Stella. “But the car, compared to what we expected, seems to be well-behaved also in low-speed – possibly slightly more than we anticipated based on our development tools, which is good news.”
Stella believes the improved driver confidence has played a role in the unexpected performance boost, but he is eager to fully understand the technical factors behind it.
“This aspect of the upgrades possibly working slightly better than expected is kind of across the map,” he said. “It’s not specific to low-speed. For us, it’s still an open point as to why the car now seems to be pretty decent in low-speed. And we don’t want to jump to conclusions too early because it’s pretty fundamental that we derive the most precise answer to this question.”
Investigating the Gains
The team principal emphasized that the issue is not related to a factory/track correlation problem, as the actual downforce gain is in line with what was predicted. Instead, the team is trying to figure out why the lap time improvement has exceeded their simulations.
“You do your simulation and you think you will gain X. But it looks like you gain X plus a little bit,” Stella said. “So, it’s not about the correlation between development and trackside. It is more that the premium from a lap-time point of view seems to be slightly bigger than what you would simulate.”
Unraveling this mystery will be critical for McLaren as it seeks to continue its upward momentum in the 2023 Formula 1 season, with the team eager to understand how to best capitalize on the unexpected gains from its latest car upgrades.
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