When the McLaren revealed the scale of the upgrade package it was bringing to the Miami GP Formula 1it became clear how ambitious this plan was.
As the official presentation to the FIA of its developments revealed, almost no aerodynamic surface was left untouched by the full package of changes that were installed on the racing car. Lando Norris.
Although the Woking-based team previously commented that the revisions were part of efforts to address a weakness in low-speed sections, the real reason for these latest developments was obvious: pure downforce.
In F1, however, not all downforce is equal – and the key to true success is delivering it in the most efficient way possible.
Depending on how you look at it, efficiency means a lot of drag, or little downforce, for a set wing level.
It’s very easy to bring in a beefy rear wing that produces a ton of “dirty” downforce to help you be quick through corners, but that’s no good once a car starts to stretch.
What’s key to understand about McLaren’s upgrades in Miami is that they brought a double whammy of gains: more clean downforce to be faster in corners, which opened the door to letting it run with fewer wings (hence more speed). on straight lines). It was basically a matter of having your cake and eating it.
As the team leader explained, Andrea Stellathe focus of his effort was to bring efficient downforce that didn’t add drag – which then allowed him to slow things down elsewhere.
So, after a recent history of being a little behind on the straights, it didn’t go unnoticed that it was now more competitive against its rivals.
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
“We had a good top speed here,” Stella explained. “One of the reasons is that we purposely decided to go with a relatively light rear wing.
“We can do that because we’ve added downforce through the package, and that means we needed to be less demanding from a rear wing perspective, which is never very efficient.
“When you upgrade a car with floors and sides, it’s always more efficient than applying downforce with a rear wing.”
The overall benefits of the package were also complemented by a slightly different path than would be expected in the configuration.
So, instead of capitalizing on the advantage it has over rivals in high-speed corners, it has changed its focus to be better optimized for the slower parts.
As Stella explained: “We consciously decided to configure the car to maximize low-speed performance.
“The decent performance we had at low speed was not necessarily down to the characteristics of the package, but also some conscious decisions about how we set up the cars to ensure we were as strong as possible at low speed.
“If you look at qualifying, we lost a lot of time in the high-speed part, but this was a deliberate right choice.”
Miami was just the beginning and there is more to come. Stella suggests that the ongoing updates will help further resolve the issues it faced at low speeds.
Asked how much the updates resolved its weakness in this area, Stella said: “Not as fully as we would like. There is some more specific work and upgrades we need to deliver to address slow speeds in particular.”
Even before the timely safety car helped Norris on his way to victory, the potential of McLaren’s new upgrade was quite clear to see.
It hadn’t been shown – with that tricky lap in SQ3 and a run off at Turn 1 in the sprint race – but when he got clean air in the race, Norris was flying.
As the Brit explained after the race: “I already said on Friday that I felt good. I was confident on Friday and today that kind of feeling came back to me a lot. It was good. Many Sundays recently have been strong. Even today we manage to intensify it and transform it into something even greater.”
The key now will be to find out at Imola whether the upgrades are a sign that McLaren are now a genuine threat to Red Bull, or whether it was simply good luck in Miami that helped Norris reach the top.
As Max Verstappen said when asked if he thought he could have won without the safety car: “I mean, it’s always if, if, if, right? If my mother had balls, she would be my father.
“That’s how it goes in racing. Sometimes it works for you, sometimes it doesn’t.”
McLaren’s job now is to turn “sometimes” into ‘more often’.
Filip Cleeren and Ronald Vording collaborated
