Gary Anderson: McLaren has distanced itself from the general trend

Gary Anderson, former race car designer and now expert for The Race, tried to take a closer look at the new McLaren MCL38 and noticed one feature that raised questions in his mind…

McLaren’s main challenge for the coming season is to build on the successes achieved in 2023, when it joined the ranks of teams fighting for places just behind Red Bull Racing.

Achieving sustainable progress is never easy, but last season McLaren identified the areas holding back chassis refinement as they improved the car. With the creation of the MCL38, the team sought to expand the possibilities for further modernization.

Front fender

The front wing and nose fairing are, as far as can be seen from the images of the car, almost identical to last year’s version. But this area can be addressed later, when it becomes clear what solutions other teams have proposed.

The problem, however, is that adjustments to the front of the car can affect the airflow structure around the chassis as a whole. The front brake ducts have a slightly different configuration, but these elements change depending on the characteristics of a particular route, as the load on the brakes varies and therefore require different levels of cooling.

A few years ago McLaren had problems with brake cooling in Bahrain, so now the team is trying to avoid such risks.

If we talk about the front suspension, the location of the front mounting point of the upper control arm is almost the same as on last year’s car, but the rear mounting point has been shifted noticeably lower. The location of the suspension and lower wishbone remain the same.

Radiator air intakes

There are some surprises caused by the changes that have taken place at the radiator air intakes. McLaren moved away from the general trend, which can be seen in all the cars we saw this year, and which followed in 2023 and in Woking, i.e. The air intakes on their MCL38 are now not the same as Red Bull’s. Now this area is not so slanted, but it “looks” forward.

Judging from the photos taken from a side angle, the profile of the pontoons and adjacent body panels is generally similar to that of last year’s car. You may notice that the cooling system fins have become larger and moved forward, but all this can change depending on the requirements of a particular route.

Rear suspension

The rear suspension configuration remains the same as last year. But if the rear mounting point of the upper triangular arm is located on the body in the same way as before, the front mounting point is shifted lower – this makes it possible to more effectively counteract the unwanted rise of the rear of the car during braking.

conclusions

With no detailed images of the rear of the car presented, it’s difficult to analyze anything here, but we can assume that everything aerodynamically remains largely the same as at the end of last season. But changes in the configuration of the radiator air inlets raise questions.

It seems that in the off-season the team paid maximum attention to stabilizing the aerodynamic platform by upgrading the chassis: now the front suspension is more resistant to chassis dive, and the rear suspension is more resistant to lifting the rear end during braking .

McLaren is probably generally happy with the aerodynamics performance,
and if the parameters are now better controlled, they are confident they can further improve chassis efficiency. As the team gathers information on the MCL38’s on-track performance, intensive aero upgrades will continue.

Source: F1 News

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