The first part of the season saw McLaren grow significantly, to the point of actually competing for victory at every stage, especially after debuting the Miami package, which allowed the MCL38 to make a clear step forward on several fronts.
At the presentation, in fact, the team’s top management had been honest in clarifying that, despite the improvements recorded, the winter work had not achieved all the objectives set. From there, a car was born that had often imposed itself as the third force, even annoying Ferrari on certain occasions.
However, with the package that debuted in Miami, things changed and McLaren made its MCL38 a car capable of fighting with Red Bull, even establishing itself as the reference car in some Grands Prix. Clearly the innovations brought worked as hoped but, above all, it was their effect that made the difference: the updates helped to cure some of the weak points of a car that still suffered in slow sections, especially when at a certain point the front was no longer able to guarantee the right support, ending up in understeer.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
However, apart from some rather specific elements, especially to adapt to the various needs of the tracks, such as the low-downforce rear wing with a less pronounced spoon profile to leave room for a more marked DRS effect. Despite the advantage in terms of exploitable time in the wind tunnel compared to other teams, also derived from the worst position in the standings at the end of last season, McLaren has shown a more cautious approach in introducing updates, also due to a double reason.
On one hand, the fact that updates clearly require certain production times and, given that we are in the era of budget caps, we try to make them as effective as possible. However, just by looking at the opponents, we also understand how introducing effective innovations has become increasingly difficult, especially considering how many rivals have had to take a step back or have had to review their development program to correct the problems.
We saw it with Ferrari at the beginning of the trio of Grand Prix with high, fast corners, when with the Barcelona package it markedly reintroduced bouncing, taking away the confidence of the drivers, so much so that it pushed the team to go back on the updates for the Silverstone event. In the same way, Aston Martin also went back on the innovations that had been introduced in Imola, because these, net of a total increase in downforce, had generated behaviors that had made the car very unstable and difficult to drive for the drivers.
Furthermore, Racing Bulls was also forced to abandon its Spanish package, so much so that for the Hungarian Grand Prix Daniel Ricciardo even returned to the car used in Miami. The latest example is that of Mercedes, which at Spa chose to temporarily set aside the fund that had debuted that very weekend due to the reintroduction of bouncing, although the Star team is confident of being able to reintroduce it after the break with an intense summer study.
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL38, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24
Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images
Stories that demonstrate how increasingly complex it is to introduce new features without there being some secondary problems to deal with. Considering that the MCL38 is performing very well on a wide variety of tracks, McLaren has chosen to wait and proceed with caution, not only to learn as much as possible from the current package that is proving to be very competitive, but at the same time to better study the future updates that will arrive after the break.
“Red Bull have actually brought more developments to the track so far, in terms of physical parts brought to the track, than we have. But I can certainly speak for McLaren. It looks like we are now able to exploit some of the developments that we have brought and I expect that for the second part of the season we will have some new parts on more occasions,” said Andrea Stella, Team Principal of the Woking-based team.
“In a way, I’m surprised that we’ve been so competitive, considering that since Miami we haven’t brought many new parts to the track. So it means that, obviously, the Miami update was important. There are some updates that will come in the second part of the season, yes.”
One of the themes that McLaren has worked on is also the development of more efficient packages for low-load tracks, an aspect on which it was rather lacking last year. It is no coincidence that at Spa twelve months ago it used the wing used in Baku, but this year, to respond to world championship ambitions, it is clear that a step forward was needed on this front too, hence the new package that debuted in the Ardennes.
The McLaren MCL38 rear wing
Picture of: George Piola
Last year, the engineers focused more on the medium and high downforce packages, leaving the remaining work for a later stage. Some improvements have already been made, but with a second part of the championship that also includes several low-downforce tracks, it is necessary to continue developing on this front: “We have done 50% of the route. I am more confident that with a high-downforce configuration, the car is in a better operating window, the car does what we want in terms of aerodynamic behavior above all”.
“But we haven’t made huge development steps and steps forward with the low-downforce configurations. For me it’s not a surprise that here in Belgium we weren’t as competitive as in Hungary and it’s not a surprise that with the same top speed, or with a slight improvement, we still lost a lot in the second sector,” explained Andrea Stella. In fact, the top speeds were very similar to those of Red Bull, which could however count on a more loaded wing configuration.
“It means that if we want to gain speed, we have to give up a lot of grip. But I hope that in the future, possibly next year in Belgium, we will have completed the search for the most efficient car, even when top speed is important,” concluded the Italian. However, there are also positives: while it is true that even in Belgium there were some shortcomings compared to the Red Bull in the high-speed corners, which still has an advantage over the competition, the MCL38 has made a significant step forward in the medium and slow-speed corners, making it a more “global” car and suitable for many tracks.
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