McLaren looks back on F1 2021; shares strengths / weaknesses, token usage

Andrea Stella and James Key talk about how the 2021 F1 season went for McLaren in terms of strengths and weaknesses, as well as other points.

Overall, the season has been very good for McLaren. For the whole season they fought with Ferrari for third place in the constructors ‘championship and also fought their way up from fifth to eighth place in the drivers’ championship. Not only that, but with the win in Monza, the team has put itself on the road to success, not just a win, but a 1-2 and everything.

They did well, in fact very well, on certain stretches. Several appearances by the drivers come to mind – tracks like Imola, Monaco, Red Bull Ring, Monza are immediately brought to mind. Also Sochi, where they did everything right, except for a race win, but because of the late rain and a wrong decision.

Overall, they had the upper hand over Ferrari for the first 2/3 of the season, but while they continued to score through the end of the season, Ferrari had the upper hand in terms of results from Monza onwards, so they took third. However, it was a close fight all season long.

But don’t forget, they changed engines and returned to Mercedes after several seasons with Renault power for 2021. However, Renault was very focused on the vehicle front and helped itself (Alpine) to return to the front of the field. As a result, it took a lot more time and effort since the McLaren was originally designed for a Renault engine.

This is what Andrea Stella and James Key said to media like FormulaRapida.net:

Conclusion 2021 –

Andrea Stella: “The season was a positive one for us. The main goal of the season was to confirm the overall upward trend for the team. Not only the technical aspect, and I think both the technical aspect and the team as a whole, we can confirm that this upward trend is there. It’s obvious that when you’ve been there for that long, P3 in the championship, you whet your appetite to get into the top 3. We were always realistic, we fought with Ferrari and Ferrari.

“We shouldn’t forget that they took pole position in Monaco in normal dry conditions. In some ways, it’s almost a surprise why they weren’t there before the end of the season. We focused on ourselves, we identified a lot of opportunities for improvement overall, certainly from the perspective of the racing team, especially in my case, and we are working on it, the motivation and commitment are still there and I see a very strong team at McLaren. So happy from this point of view. “

James key: “I think it’s a largely positive season. We wanted to consolidate our position in the overall standings. Let’s say we’re looking from an operational standpoint, so for every event we had Q3 and top 10 material, which is by and large good, and we got some great results this year which is really good to see. We have already been a little closer to the top several times and have been at the front several times on the routes that suited us. I think we saw a good development there, I think we should be happy with that. In the last phase it was a mixed match that probably hurt our championship position a bit.

“We had a difficult triple header for a lot of reasons, in part it was the car’s performance and other things that we weren’t expecting. Even if we were in good positions, for example the flat tire problem in Qatar, even the red flag in Saudi Arabia, it didn’t go away. So I think we were there, I’m a bit in the circumstance, but the coincidental circumstance was ruined for late, but still, if we look at the season as a whole, we can be satisfied. We know Ferrari are terrifying opponents, we are definitely still catching up in many ways as a team. Now we are still quite young as an organization. We have investments etc to catch up, so it would be facilities. It was great to be in P3 for so long.

“From the perspective of the package, and then definitely some events that we knew would probably be a little difficult for us before we set off because we know our car, we know our weaknesses and strengths. To really understand the weekends when it didn’t work out, which definitely has to do with the car, we weren’t as strong as we’d like. We went through the analysis, we knew what to expect. We’ve done a lot of analysis to really look at how these issues are going to be happening with the new car over the next year and to make sure we are accountable to a blank sheet of paper and a legacy of built-in behaviors in a new car. We can use the data very well for the future, even on difficult weekends. I don’t think we’ll get any surprises, especially personally I think it was as expected. And in a sub-optimal way, we expected to be quick at Monza on the whole thing where our car would have problems. So, as I said, no big surprises, but we are increasingly coming up with what we need. “

Strengths and weaknesses –

Button: “We didn’t actively choose to make high speed our greatest strength. I think it was more of a case of strength that we had anyway. The efficiency was somehow built in from last year and is in a similar situation. Obviously it’s a really nice and a bit positive part as he certainly made the car quick. I think the efficiency that we want to hold onto has been a very careful pursuit of the 2020 car and like some 2019 cars it was a bit ahead of my time, but I know that was a priority and this one Performance will somehow pull through. So yeah, efficiency feels good. I think what we see when braking straight ahead, which is our forte like high speed cornering, reflects the performance we can get with the nature of the car we have.

“What we are missing, and we worked on that between 2020 and 2021, is generating power at low speeds. We know why we are not quite there yet. The car is not quite as robust as at the high speed in the slow corners. What we noticed last year is that we had similar traits – in fact, we had them in 2019 – and we also had very strong wind sensitivity last year, all of which suggest very similar circumstances in the makeup of the car. Much of the work that went into the 2021 car – like reducing downforce over the ground, etc. – was therefore specifically aimed at addressing some of these issues.

“Unfortunately, it’s not because of them that there’s a great silver bullet to turn on and it’s great, it takes a while to get them working, you can make them work faster, but the strengths in other areas lose and soon. That was the fight we were up against. We knew it was going to be tough in those big corners where the grip level is really crucial in slow corners. We noticed that it was a weakness of this car. We also knew Monza would be strong because almost everything is really fast corners. So everything fits together for us, but as I said, it wasn’t a choice. It was about building levels of performance that we knew where we needed to be and then working on spreading that performance over a wider area of ​​corners, which takes time. “

Mercedes engine installation / use of tokens for it –

Button: “To be honest, we didn’t look at it for too long. We would like to have the token issued. It always seemed a bit of a shame that we had to spend money on installing the engine, many components had to be changed. But of course the intention of the homologation was to keep the components the same. So you can understand it to some extent, but as I said, we didn’t look at it for too long. We brought some of the bits up to help overcome some of these issues. So we arguably did extra work in 2020 to make up for the fact that we didn’t have any token spending in 2021. I think with the hustle and bustle of a new engine installation that probably dominated our thoughts, but yes, I still think both actually count, will it be things that we did differently?

“I think the engine installation would have been a little different if we had had normal freedom. We obviously have to put a Mercedes engine in a car that was built for the Renault engine, and that is what the FIA ​​wanted to see. So under normal conditions we wouldn’t have done that, so few compromises. As for spending, yes there are probably a couple of areas we would have attacked again, it would have been around the front suspension, maybe some, a little bit mechanical in the rear, but I don’t think it brought us a massive downside, Because the concepts that we wanted for the car in 2021 were set up, so to speak, in 2020. “

McLaren-Mercedes wants to take off in 2022. Your topic may now be considered end-to-end from front to back. A year in a 4-year partnership, the season went very well. Their goal now is to build on this year and overtake Ferrari (to be honest, very little between them) and switch to Red Bull and Mercedes.

The story was written by Neil Farell

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