The McLaren team brought to Miami the most comprehensive set of technical innovations concerning different parts of the car: the front wing, front suspension, brake air ducts, side pontoons, an additional rear wing, etc.
However, they are only fully installed on Lando Norris’ car.
“On one car the entire range of new products is installed, and on the second – about 50%,” admitted Andrea Stella, team leader. “Of course, we tried a certain combination of them and found that they were quite compatible with each other, making it possible to deploy only half of the updates.
A front wing was installed on one of the cars, but it was not necessary to immediately install a modernized bottom and side pontoons. I believe that it is always difficult to achieve an effective compromise between the behavior of the car at low and high speeds – there may be several reasons.
But one of the reasons is always the ride height, as cars of this generation rely on ground effect. They largely depend on the distance between the bottom and the track surface and how much control you have over what happens in the area of the bottom and below.
It’s not that we don’t have enough new components, but that a lot of work needs to be done with these new products. We need to check that they really work, both from a mechanical and aerodynamic point of view – that’s why we only installed them on one car.”
However, this did not stop Piastri from setting the second fastest time during training in Miami, losing just over a tenth to Max Verstappen.
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.
