If you’d have said this time last year that McLaren – who had the slowest car at the beginning of 2023 – was going to be quickest at an aero dependent track like Barcelona, most people would have bitten your hand off.
If not for losing two positions from Pole and getting stuck behind Russell in the opening laps, Norris would have probably been able to control the Grand Prix from the front.
“But it would almost look like the great balance of performance that we had in qualifying transferred into the race.”
Instead, McLaren decided to run an offset strategy to Verstappen in Barcelona. A slow(ish) pitstop and Norris having to work his way past the cars who stopped earlier and undercut him culminated in the Brit finishing just over two seconds off the win.
“The race pace [between us and Red Bull] was very similar,” said McLaren team principal Andrea Stella. “I think the fact we were faster at the end was because we had fresher tyres, the fact that Verstappen was faster at the start was because we were behind Russell.
“But it would almost look like the great balance of performance that we had in qualifying transferred into the race. Whereas normally there’s some variations as a function of how you interact with the tyres, but actually today it was very similar.”
It is hard to gauge exactly how close Norris and Verstappen were because of how differently their respective races played out. But it took all the reigning Champion’s skill to drag out a victory.
The Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya has generally played into the Red Bull’s strengths so far during this regulation set. It’s super demanding aerodynamically, with a wide range of corner types and is generally very high degradation.
The RB20 still monsters the high speed compared to the competition, but it looks like a difficult car to balance in the medium and slow speed corners.
Benefits of High Downforce
Teams are now able to run the cars even closer to the ground on smooth circuits without inducing porpoising. A car that utilises a lot of ground effect gains huge amounts of downforce when run closer to the ground, and so they are pushing the limits as the upside in downforce is huge.
Teams are now seeing the effect of a car that is well balanced in a high-speed corner but tends to understeer in the slower stuff. Tune the car to work well in slower corners and it will be on a knife edge in fast corners.
Finding the sweet spot is difficult and like anything in motorsport, it’s a compromise to achieve the best lap time.
Stella revealed that the team have worked on improving how the car performs across a wider speed range – something that McLaren have struggled with in the previous few years.
Some people in the paddock now believe the MCL38 to be the fastest car on the grid.
“While there’s some sections of the car that don’t necessarily fit the characteristics [of the circuit] there’s some others that do fit,” he said.
“If you look at the second sector, we have been very competitive all weekend. But this again witnessing the improvement we have made in the medium and low speed which we have discussed previously at events that were mainly low speed dominated.
“We have some work to do now actually in the high speed. We have been able to alter the personality of the car.
“Now it’s a car that works well in a speed range that months ago was our weakness, but with this generation of cars you gain somewhere, and you lose a little bit somewhere else.
“It’s not like we made the high speed worse, but we didn’t improve it as much as we did in some other areas.”
Some people in the paddock now believe the MCL38 to be the fastest car on the grid. And while that could be true, beating a well-oiled machine in the Verstappen/Red Bull combination is no easy task, so everything must fall well into place if victories are to become a regular occurrence.
But Norris summed up perfectly where McLaren now find themselves over the team radio in Barcelona : “It doesn’t really matter does it; I should have won but I f***** up the start. The car was amazing well done, but we deserved more.”
The days of the team celebrating a podium are long gone. They’re in a position to win and challenge the once seemingly invincible Red Bull tyrant.
That was unthinkable 12 months ago….. heck, it was even three months ago.
All eyes will be on the British team in Spielberg as they try to continue their rise up the Constructors Championship.
Photo credit: McLaren Racing
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