After four stages of the season, McLaren sits confidently in third place in the Constructors’ Championship, behind only Red Bull Racing and Ferrari. The MCL38 is clearly more efficient than last year’s MCL60, although it is not without some shortcomings.
It handles fast and medium turns well, but loses out in slow and long turns. In addition, in terms of maximum speed on straight lines, it is also inferior to the cars of its closest rivals. At the same time, on the Shanghai circuit, where the fifth stage of the season will take place, there are two fairly long stretches of this kind, in particular the length of the back straight is 1.1 km, and is preceded by a long 13th corner .
The corner complex after Turn 1 has to be taken at relatively low speeds, but the McLaren car cannot handle the middle sector corners, from 7 to 9, well.
“Of course we will have difficulties at this stage, and of different kinds,” confirmed Andrea Stella, the head of the British team, in response to a question from Speedcafe. – What will the situation be like with the asphalt surface? However, we must not forget that in the past the circuit in China was one of the circuits where the most pronounced rubber granulation was observed, and we do not know how the tires will cope with all this.
There will be little time for training, and it is not a fact that we will have time to understand what is happening in the field of granulation. Moreover, it is difficult to achieve optimal chassis balance on this circuit because there are very high speed corners, such as the 1st, and there are many slow sections. When I look at all of this individually, it gives me a headache.”
The weekend schedule will pose additional problems for the teams as the first sprint race of the season will be held in Shanghai. At the same time, the preceding qualifying takes place on Friday afternoon, after which the cars are placed in a closed park until the Saturday sprint. A short race will take place on Saturday morning, after which the teams will prepare for qualifying scheduled for that afternoon. Since there is only one training session this weekend and the Chinese Grand Prix has not been held since 2019, preparation for it will be fraught with significant difficulties.
“Once you have assessed your competitiveness, I think you should apply this approach: “Even if we have not worked perfectly, but at least a little better than our rivals, this can already provide good opportunities,” Stella reasoned. – I must admit that of all the stages of the first part of the season, the Chinese circuit worries me the most in terms of competitiveness, because it has so many slow sections, hairpins and even turns 2 and 3 that I would classify in this category. In Shanghai, quite a bit of time is spent cornering. So far we have not been able to achieve enough noticeable improvements in the car’s behavior in slow and long corners at medium speed, so I expect we will have more problems in China.”
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.
