McLaren may have lost third place in the constructors’ championship, which they secured last year, to Ferrari, but 2021 was another step in the right direction.
More importantly, it closed the gap to the top in terms of performance and also ended a winning drought that stretched back to the 2012 Brazilian Grand Prix.
It was still disappointing to miss this third place, especially since the 17.5 point advantage in the last seven races led to a deficit of 48.5 points. Ferrari’s strong finish after the launch of its new hybrid faltered that fight, with McLaren’s own score being diminished by Lando Norris’ repeated misfortunes in the closing stages of the season.
Nevertheless, Executive Racing Director Andrea Stella was satisfied with the progress: “The main goal of the season was to confirm the overall upward trend of the team”. This was confirmed by the fact that McLaren’s power deficit fell from just under 1.4% this year to just over 0.9% in 2021.
With the team’s financial position stabilizing after the difficulties of last season and major infrastructure projects like building a new wind tunnel, this season was part of a bigger picture for McLaren in a transitional period. The fact that things have gone so well confirms the improvements that have been made across the board in recent years.
McLaren was the only team AC supplier to face a unique challenge in 2021 thanks to the switch from Renault to Mercedes powertrains. Originally, the timing was elegantly coordinated with the new technical regulations, which were then postponed to 2022.
As a result, McLaren had no development tokens to spend on its only legal car modifications required to accommodate an engine with a completely different architecture. The result was the McLaren-Mercedes MCL35M.
But McLaren had hit key developments hard in anticipation of this in 2020. Ahead of last year’s homologation deadline, it introduced a modified, narrower nose and front suspension tweaks that would have been impossible without the issuance of tokens if they hadn’t been done later.
So integrating the new power unit was a priority, not an easy task given the constraints the world was suffering thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic at the time the process began in earnest last year.
“We tried to do this when the sport stopped in 2020. This is really when you need to discuss the big parts of a new engine installation and its implications, ”McLaren Technical Director James Key told The Race.
“It was a big challenge in that the program started late and most of it was done from home on both sides. So we had the compromise of not just being able to meet at a table and discuss or stand on a test bench and look at an engine and so on.
“We also had the complexity of new registrations that limited a bit of what we could really change based on the token issues. So in that respect we had more challenges than usual.
“The engine installation itself was relatively easy. The Mercedes engine is a really tidy art of engineering; It’s compact, it’s very easy to use, there are no large machine parts sticking out, no large wiring harnesses and other things that need to be accommodated. It’s just a really classy package.
“In terms of the physical engineering work to get it into a car, it was a pleasure to work with and we had fantastic support from Mercedes during these difficult times.”
The changeover brought growth in all areas, which is underlined by the fact that Renault took a conservative approach to power unit development in 2021. However, by switching to an engine with a split turbo and compressor, this meant a slight increase in the length of the car.
As with all teams, adapting to the optimized aerodynamic regulations took some time, but Key once again describes the development as “fairly productive”. The changes made in 2020, both during the season and when the car was launched, in relation to the rear suspension had opened up effective opportunities for development and it seemed that much more had to be wrested from the car except for the design and needs Prioritize development work on the car in 2022.
“It has allowed us to proceed at a reasonable pace of development,” says Key. “Everything that went on the car was positive and we didn’t have any misfires. We had a new front wing and Barcelona, which was a really good step forward for us, a great performance from the front wing group with some good qualities.
“The properties are definitely better than last year. So all of these things could have continued.
“We went through a few points that you may have questioned before, but knowing that development in ’21 will stop a lot sooner than you normally would, we also worked through all the smaller parts. Everything worked and everything stayed with the car, so that was positive. “
The 2020 car was aerodynamically efficient and did well in faster corners and braking, but wasn’t optimal at lower speeds. It was also a little too sensitive to wind.
McLaren certainly achieved its goal of holding on to the strengths and removing the weaknesses, although some of those traits were still visible. Monza, where McLaren took the famous one-two under Daniel Ricciardo, was once again a good fit for the car, but Lando Norris also made it onto the podium on tracks as diverse as Monaco, the Red Bull Ring and Imola.
Even so, his performance profile was not as balanced and it was still difficult to consistently generate the necessary downforce in slower corners – especially longer ones. That meant routes like Zandvoort and Istanbul were a problem.
“We didn’t actively choose to make high speed our greatest strength,” Key said in Abu Dhabi. “It was more of a case of strength than we had anyway. Efficiency was built in from last year.
“Straight-line braking and fast corners reflect the performance that we can achieve with the nature of our car. What we lack – and we worked on that between ’20 and ’21 – is generating low-speed performance.
“We know why we haven’t quite reached our goal yet. The car is not quite as robust as it is at high speed at low speed. Last year we had similar traits – in fact we had it in ’19 – and we also had very strong wind sensitivity last year, all of which suggest very similar makeup circumstances on the car.
“So a lot of the work that went into the 2021 car was addressing some of these issues. Unfortunately, it’s not that there is a great silver bullet, they take a while to work, you can make them work faster but lose strengths in other areas. That was the fight we were up against.
“It was about building the level of performance and then working on spreading that performance over a larger area of corners, which takes time.”
Had the regulations not changed, McLaren would have focused more on making the low-speed aero more robust for the next year. Instead, it will wage this particular war in 2022. Additionally, it will be important, especially given the expectation that the simplified aerodynamics will make it harder to keep the car steady through longer turns, especially the slower turns where McLaren has struggled.
The McLaren was also a car that required a very specific driving style, which Norris largely surpassed as it was his third season driving for the team but which Daniel Ricciardo struggled with.
While the Australian made progress with what he described as the “more peculiar” demands of the car, he was never able to beat it completely, especially on corners with “combination” entrances where he had difficulty getting the car adequately through the braking. and run-in phase to rotate. which often made him fight for traction in the exit phase.
While he scored more points than Norris in the last nine races of the season, that was largely a fluke – even though Ricciardo’s Monza performance was superb.
“We have a car with a strong peak downforce,” says Key. “Places like Monza show that because Monza has high-speed corners, a lot of straights and then only a few really slow corners.
“Where it gets tricky is because of some old car features that you can move around, but you would lose a lot of downforce. It’s this basic philosophy that’s been in there for a while.
“The windier [twisty] Tracks, we’re a little bit compromised in how easily we can balance our car. That’s the bit that is difficult to drive. Lando grew up with it and has a style that by and large allows him to tune and take advantage of the car.
“If you are new to it like Daniel it was or as Carlos [Sainz] Joined the team a few years ago, you have to adjust your driving style a bit to get the most out of it.
“When it’s fast, it’s really fast and places like Monza have done very well, but places like Zandvoort. Hungary is similar, it’s one of those tricky tracks where certain conditions just hit the weaknesses and the steeper slopes of the sensitivities and mechanical setups try to mitigate this, but they all degrade each other a bit. That is the difficult thing.
“Unfortunately, one of Daniel’s great strengths was always braking really hard and turning in and driving quickly through a curve.
“I remember seeing him in the Toro Rosso days when he picked up on all of this and you could see he was getting faster and faster. It’s one of the tricky things that our car turns off those strengths. In the worst case, the weaknesses of our car do not allow him to do that. “
Ricciardo’s difficulties, at least offset by the fact that he was generally able to put together effective races even on the weekends when he was at a lower level than his teammate, and Norris’ late-season mishaps led McLaren to end the season with points per race of 12.5, no significant improvement over last year’s 11.9, but maybe a little lower than the team’s overall deserved performance.
Still, finishing behind Ferrari was a fair result, and while it wasn’t worth that financially, the Monza one-two (the only one-two a team scored in 2021) was corrosive for a team that has been through so much over the past decade.
But what really matters is that there was clear evidence of progress. While the rule changes of 2022 come a little early for this, as McLaren’s facilities are still being refurbished, the foundations are in place for a possibly further step in the next year.
