At a time when the FIA had a lot frozen on the 2020 cars, which allowed teams to transfer parts without spending R&D resources on further refinement, a PU change is a huge task that affects many areas of the car.
Add to that aero regulation changes and the revamped Pirelli tires everyone had to deal with, plus a new driver in the form of Daniel Ricciardo, and the Woking team faced quite a challenge this winter.
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And yet McLaren came out of the Bahrain test at its best and looked like a team that really worked together, despite the humble technical director James Key finding that it “took baby steps” through all of these challenges.
It says a lot about the current level of organization of the team that the MCL35M ran for a day of shooting at Silverstone for the first time on February 16, around 24 days before the Mercedes W12 hit the track in Bahrain last Friday – for a lifetime in F1 terms .
McLaren even found time to do a second day of shooting and collect more data.
Track debuts are important because they are set months in advance and dictate the R&D, production and vehicle construction plans.
Daniel Ricciardo, McLaren MCL35M
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Traditionally everyone wants to go to the limit and approve the design of parts as late as possible. The disadvantage is that the later you drive the car, the less time you have to deal with problems that arise.
Mercedes took that risk by not driving as far as Bahrain and staying its first day of filming until after the test, and the problems it faced over the weekend suggest the world championship team paid a price for that election.
Rather than using the extra work involved in changing the engine as a reason to be among the last to drive, McLaren went the opposite way, making sure the car was ready early so it had enough time to get data to analyze and sort everything beforehand the first real test in Bahrain.
The seemingly smooth flow of the three days indicated that the strategy had paid off.
“We had a lot of ingredients that we needed to make sure we were getting the most of the opportunity we had this week,” Key said on Sunday.
“So we did it a little bit step by step, we took our time building the car, we covered a few kilometers before we came here, we had gaps between those kilometers to do a few dyno tests with Mercedes and also a few days of filming that were shot but also gave us some opportunities to drive the car as well.
“We had a few gaps in between just so we could see how things were going and fix some problems we found along the way. It was a bit of baby steps to get us into this week and hope we could Can be reliable, but fingers crossed, so far it has been quite reasonable. “
The best McLaren time was a modest seventh fastest overall time over the three days of testing, but rivals believe there’s much more to come from the Woking team.
Others ran more kilometers, and in fact McLaren was only eighth in the list of completed laps, ahead of Aston Martin and Mercedes. While the bottom of the table on these teams was a clear sign of mechanical problems, it was not the case with McLaren.
“There is no negative reason for the number of laps we have, it has more to do with the fact that we switched drivers every day, which always has a small effect on the timing,” said Key.
“We’ve also tried to split our time between collecting data, which can be time-consuming at times, and driving kilometers on the car.
“Of course you want to drive a lot of kilometers straight away, but when you do that you don’t necessarily get all of the little tests that we normally start our day with.
“It was planned, of course we want to get the maximum mileage, but I think the program we had ticked a lot of boxes that we had to tick.”
Lando Norris, McLaren MCL35M
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
It wasn’t just a smooth performance on the track and in the garage that caught the eye. A novel approach to the new diffuser restrictions gave food for thought to rivals and demonstrated that Key and his aero team push the envelope in interpreting the rules.
“I always find it nice when a team has a unique idea,” he said. “And the credit goes entirely to our aero department and the guys in the Heck Aero Group for recognizing that there is an opportunity there to use the new regulations in this way.
“Full appreciation and in that respect yes, of course it’s nice to find something that might be a little bit unique to us.
“I suppose it’s one of the visible things that is talked about a lot, but ultimately it’s just a bit of a much wider picture of a complex part of the rear of the car. I’m sure it will be forgotten in time. “We’ll be back here in a couple of weeks.”
Where does McLaren stand in the pecking order? The team is certainly higher than seventh place headline totals suggest, and the same could be said for Alpine and Aston, just eighth and ninth on this list.
Key insists the team spent the day in Bahrain to focus on their job list rather than analyzing what the rivals have achieved. That’ll come later.
“That’s very hard to say,” says Key. “For us it was really about looking at ourselves, making sure we were familiar with the steps we took during the test, ticking the boxes above, making sure the reliability of the engine installation was critical to us and Mercedes and so on.
“It wasn’t a bad test, but of course it’s very difficult to say exactly where everyone is.”
Team principal Andreas Seidl was just as careful about where McLaren is.
“I think it is difficult to know the pecking order exactly,” said the German. “But from everything we’ve seen so far, we can expect another incredibly close battle, between the usual suspects. I think we’ll be fighting the same battle again as last year.”
Andreas Seidl, Team Principal, McLaren
Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
“We must not forget that we also have a new partner in Mercedes, and in two weeks we have to go through a lot of things under real pressure the first time – qualifying, races – which is a challenge because it is a complex subject to this modern one To operate gensets together with the team in these situations.
“But as the last month has gone, I’m really happy that I have to say, with everything the team has done and all the energy that everyone has put in.”
He warned: “It was great for us to finish P3 last year, but at the same time we didn’t forget the last race where we could easily have finished P5.”
The early test debut has clearly paid off so far and puts the team in a strong position before the first race. The counter-argument is that a late start with later release of parts and thus more time for construction can have advantages that have an effect throughout the year.
However, this is not an ordinary season as so many parts are frozen, the budget cap is now in place, and all R&D resources, especially aviation, are gradually shifting all the way to the 2022 project.
No team can be sure that it has pursued a strategy that it has optimally set up for this year as well as for the new regulations – and the real answer will only become apparent in the long term.
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