McLaren had a convincing season in 2021, crowned by the splendid double scored by Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris in the Italian Grand Prix.
However, the Woking team failed to confirm their third place in 2020 in the Constructors’ classification, having to settle for fourth after a long battle with Ferrari’s historic rivals.
The MCL35 particularly excelled on high-speed tracks, thanks to high efficiency and relatively low drag, but suffered in slow-speed corners. Technical director James Key hopes he has managed to remedy this weakness by building a more balanced car for the 2022 season.
“We paid a lot of attention to the drag on the 2020 car, as was the case on the 2019 car, which was born before I arrived, but I know it was a priority for that car and we pushed the plan forward,” said Key.
“The efficiency is good. I think what we have seen on the straights, which are one of our strengths, but also in the high-speed corners, reflects the kind of performance we can generate with a car of this nature.”
“What we lack, and which we have been working on in 2020 and 2021, is to generate more performance at low speed, but we know why we are not there yet.”
“The car is not as competitive as it is at high speeds and a lot of the work we did on the 2021 car was just trying to tackle some of these problems.”
“Unfortunately, there is no single solution that makes everything suddenly great. It takes a while to get things working. That’s why we knew that, for example, in Zandvoort we would struggle. Likewise, we knew. that we would have been strong in Monza “.
Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
With Formula 1 introducing a completely new technical regulation this season, with cars generating the load mainly with the bottom, Key believes this reset represents a good opportunity to solve this problem, even if at the same time there will be no more racing. guarantee of having a competitive car on the fastest tracks.
“I think it’s important to work on weaknesses rather than strengths,” he explained. “The nature of the 2022 cars should make it a little easier to maintain some of our strengths, which are still relative anyway.”
“We know we had some strengths on our car, but we don’t know what other people’s cars will be like, so maybe there will be a completely different scenario.”
“We focused more on trying to have a balanced car. In fact, it is the same process we would have liked to do even if the regulation had remained the same, but clarification we had to adapt it to the new regulation”.
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