The McLaren drivers performed poorly in qualifying in Miami yesterday, with team boss Andrea Stella acknowledging that this was in line with a particular trend that has emerged this season: the MCL60 is not efficient enough in poor grip conditions.
Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were out of contention in the first session – last time none of McLaren’s representatives progressed to the second part of qualifying in Brazil in 2018.
Norris showed the 16th result, his partner not going above 19th, despite both starting from the top ten in the previous stage. However, Stella sees no particular contradictions in this. According to him, the car’s shortcomings show up precisely on tracks with insufficient grip, so in Miami the MCL60 performed worst in slow corners, for example with a circle section from 11 to 16.
“I think there is a certain trend, the essence of which is that when the adhesion is high, our car becomes more competitive,” said the team leader. – On this track, despite the new asphalt surface, there is still very little grip, which is why this trend manifests itself.
It’s due to the fact that riders with low levels of adhesion have to spend more time coasting with the throttle off, and our car doesn’t behave in the best way in such situations.
The best grip was on Friday during the second practice session, and not only was the session already in the afternoon, but also the sky was covered with clouds. The track and air temperatures dropped slightly, the car started to work more efficiently and the riders were able to attack.
When you brake aggressively, you minimize the distance you travel in a corner without hitting the brake or accelerator pedal, and the car immediately becomes more efficient. For example, you can remember Baku, where there was also new asphalt this year, but that provided a lot of grip.
And in all parts of the circle where we could brake aggressively, in tight corners, like 1st and 2nd, we were quite competitive. But if we talk about the part that runs along the fortress wall, where you have to roll out from time to time, then the machine worked less efficiently there.
We know that the innovations we prepared for the weekend in Baku allowed us to increase the downforce a bit, but this did not change the basic characteristics of the car. I am therefore not surprised that we lose some degree of competitiveness in low adhesion conditions.
But the positive thing is that we have identified this drawback of the machine and in the course of refinement we can focus our efforts on correcting it, including in the research process using CFD technologies and in a wind tunnel.
We see that the car handles braking in a straight line, with fast parts of the circle, and even in fast corners there is no loss of time. Although the weaknesses of the machine are known to us, this does not mean that they are easy to fix. But we are preparing a whole series of technical innovations and during the further modernization of the MCL60 it will be necessary to take into account the lessons learned from the results of the first races.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
