McLaren chief strategist on Australia tactics

The third leg of the season, held on the renovated circuit in Melbourne’s Albert Park, was the most successful race for McLaren this year. While 5th and 6th place are not the most notable results, the team still outperformed in Australia than in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

Randy Singh, chief strategist at McLaren, shared how this grand prix has developed for the team.

For the 2022 race, the Australian circuit has been extensively reconstructed, the configuration has been adjusted and the asphalt has been completely replaced. In some corners it got wider, the pit lane got wider, so the speed limit there was raised to 80 km/x. There were other changes, so basically when the teams arrived in Melbourne they had to re-acquaint themselves with the track, although Formula 1 races have been held there since 1996.

Randy Singh: “We knew about the changes on the track, but until you see them, you don’t know exactly what they are and what their impact will be. Therefore, during practice on Friday, it was necessary to analyze a lot: it turned out that the new corners changed the ratio between low, medium and high speeds very significantly.

Of course, DRS zones affect overtaking, but they also affect other parameters. There are more of these zones, and if the car is driven longer with the rear wing open, you will need to adjust the drag appropriate for this track.

Historically, the Australian circuit is considered one of the most difficult to overtake. Before the race we thought it would probably be easier to overtake now.”

During Friday practice, the softest compound tires were found to be too gritty, so all teams only used them in qualifying and no one wanted to take any risks during the race.

“I think it was clear that nobody liked them,” Singh continued. – In the race they were only put on Alex Albon’s Williams and only for one lap. I doubt anyone intended to use Soft – the level of degradation was too great.

It also became clear during training that overtaking at Albert Park is still not easy, so the choice of tactics, the right work with rubber, the choice of the optimal moment for the pit stop and the coordinated actions in the pits remained important factors on which the result depends.

“Most thought it was going to be a one-stop race, so starting on Medium tires would make the most sense,” said McLaren’s chief strategist. “I think the drivers who chose to start on hard tires seemed less satisfied with the results of qualifying and wanted to try to behave differently from everyone else in the hope that this would make them progress faster. .”

Lando Norris drove a hard set on lap 20, Daniel Ricciardo followed on the next lap.

“The decision to make a pit stop when we made it was quite simple and understandable: the Medium tires were already worn out,” explains Singh. – We expected some traffic problems from Verstappen, who pushed forward after his pit stop, but we were able to safely enter the pits and stay ahead of Okon.

We would have stayed on track longer if we could, but there weren’t many opportunities for that. It’s good that both our cars are back on track for Elbon. The mechanics did a great job during the pit stops – this year we are generally doing well with pit stops, but you can never expect everything to go perfectly all the time. If the pit stop had lasted just a few tenths longer, we would have been behind Albon.

After the pit stops we were in good positions and most of the cars around us followed the same tactics. We couldn’t beat Mercedes, but we were ahead of Ocon and the biggest risk came from Alonso, who chose an alternative tactic.

Strangely enough, but we were helped by the safety car, which left the track at an unfortunate moment for Fernando. This moment wasn’t very successful for us either, as we had just made our pit stops, but Alonso couldn’t go to the pits because it was too early for him…”

As a result, when Fernando made his pit stop on lap 39 (at which point the virtual safety car mode was introduced), he was 11 seconds behind Daniel Ricciardo on track. And then it became clear that the revamped track at Albert Park is not much different from the previous one: even with fresher Alonso tires it was difficult to overtake slower cars and he was increasingly lagging behind Riccardo.

Because the McLaren drivers could not overtake their vehicles in front, but no one could overtake them either, they drove the last third of the distance relatively calmly. Of course, in this situation, the team’s strategists were also prepared for any possible scenario – from the appearance of red flags to an attempt to earn an extra bonus point for the fastest lap.

But these scenarios have not been realized. In reality, after his pit stops, Lando was in 8th position, Daniel in 9th. On lap 34 Lando passed Kevin Magnussen into 7th position, a lap later Daniel overtook the Dane. Accordingly, after Max Verstappen’s retirement and Alonso’s pit stop, they climbed to 5th and 6th place, where they finished.