After starting the season with a car that had not yet seen all the updates designed for the winter break, similar to what happened at the start of the 2023 championship, McLaren pushed on development. Thanks to the work carried out during the year, especially with the package introduced in Miami, the MCL38 has become the reference car and, above all, it has transformed into a single-seater capable of being competitive on a great variety of tracks, demonstrating the its versatility.
The engineers gradually managed to work on three of the most problematic areas, namely the aero load generated, the problem of excessive drag on the straights and the difficulties in making the front work at low speed, an issue that penalized especially in the slower corners .
Clearly, behind the scenes there has been a great deal of work on the mechanical and aerodynamic front, which has above all allowed it to find an operating window that makes the MCL38 both effective on the fastest corners, where Red Bull is still a reference point, but also in low speed areas. A lot of work has also been done in terms of aeroelasticity, but a particularly interesting front is that carried out on completely renewing the range of the rear wings, reaching as many as seven different configurations during the season, to which is added what has been done with the beam wings , which in turn offer even more options.
McLaren MCL38
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
The fact that McLaren has brought so many rear wings clearly does not mean that they all arrive completely brand new, because in some cases, especially at the beginning of the year, the basis was that of the wings already brought in the second half of last season, when the team had started investing. In 2023, in fact, the Woking team began the process of updating the technical package, starting from the medium and high load configuration, the one it thought would guarantee it the greatest benefits during the rest of the season, instead leaving work on the high load one. low downforce for later.
The interesting aspect is that McLaren now has a wide range of rear wings in its arsenal to adapt to many scenarios, to which is also added all the work done with the beam wing to find the right balance. To give an idea, at Silverstone, the Woking team had 3 different configurations available to guarantee the best possible stability with respect to the drag generated: the fact of having configurations that were also close in terms of load, without a big jump, allowed for example to switch to a heavier version on Saturday due to the risk of rain, but without excessively penalizing top speeds.
More generally, McLaren has made versatility its strong point, because it has configurations for many different situations, even at a high load level. For example, while other teams in Zandvoort used a medium load or very high load version, Monaco style, the Woking team presented themselves with an intermediate version, further expanding the choice.
Comparison between the beam wings of the McLaren MCL38
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
“With the winger we had for Monaco, we think it was specific to Monaco. Since we are going through our wing family and updating them, we thought we should choose a lower drag level than Munich and we set out to update that as well in the development path of our rear wing family , how we updated the others,” explained Andrea Stella in Zandvoort, illustrating how the team is working to update all the rear wings.
The interesting aspect is that, in addition to the issue of downforce deriving from the mainplane, the team also plays on other aspects, such as the more external shapes of the flap depending on whether it needs more or less load, to which is also added the different configuration of the beam wing. In Singapore, for example, the team presented itself with a double beam wing, with the upper element evolving to provide even more load to work closely with the diffuser and the lower part of the rear wing.
In general, we have seen that, as confirmed by Stella, the work on the medium and high load package has borne fruit, because now the MCL38 is the most efficient car thanks to what has been done on two fronts, namely on the car body, which allows you to generate a lot of load from the bottom, and that on the wings. “I believe that at the moment, our car in the high downforce configuration has the best aerodynamic efficiency of the whole grid. At low downforce, however, I believe that the efficiency of Ferrari and Red Bull is much more comparable to that of our car”, added the Team Principal.
McLaren MCL38 technical detail
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
At Spa, McLaren brought a new low-load aerodynamic package, also in this case updated to the latest development dictates made by McLaren, in order to achieve greater efficiency. “Spa was also a new wing, but it has been updated with more modern concepts.”
McLaren’s work did not stop only at the functioning of the floor, but it is clear that the Woking engineers worked meticulously on multiple areas of the car, trying not to progressively update every critical area of the single-seater, including the beam wing and the wings. both front and rear. It is no coincidence that this season, beyond the controversy generated after Baku due to the elasticity of the DRS flap, more generally there has been a lot of talk about the functioning and effectiveness of the McLaren wings, which has worked to find great versatility in different scenarios.
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