2023-07-09 01:16:46
McLaren says weakness remains despite stunning British GP qualifying performance
McLaren admits that despite their stunning performances in qualifying at home to the British GP, their drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have fundamental weaknesses in their car that they have yet to address.
Norris and Piastri, who have fully exploited the potential of McLaren’s latest upgrade package, won the first row back and second row front for the official race later today, an excellent starting position. But no one in the British heritage was complacent, as they knew it was the high-speed nature of the Silverstone circuit and the cooler temperatures that helped the MCL-60’s advantage.
While they don’t want to be too negative with such an encouraging result, McLaren say they still have a lot of work to do before their car can perform well on all types of circuits.
Norris, who lost 0.2 seconds to Max Verstappen in the pole position competition, said: “Obviously our car has improved, and the overall performance and speed have indeed improved considerably.”
“But if I had to say anything negative, there are some tracks where we definitely struggle a little bit because our weaknesses are still there and quite obvious. So I think if we want to be more consistent, we really need to work on that. these weaknesses.”
While McLaren has made progress in addressing the aerodynamic efficiency of its early-season version of the car, they still struggle with car balance, low-speed cornering, and a weak trailing edge that makes tires prone to overheating and Makes them lack the speed of the official game.
Andrea Stella, principal of McLaren team, said that the reason why they can have such excellent speed at Silverstone circuit, as well as the promising performances of the previous Spanish and Austrian GP runs, is to benefit from the lower temperature and the relatively high temperature. Soft tire configuration, which masks the car’s weaknesses.
Stella said: “It’s definitely becoming a pattern, high speed corners, low temperature, soft tires, which, by the way, are also C3 sized tires. We prefer these conditions and it suits our car.”
“Under these conditions, the rear of the car naturally has grip that you don’t have following continuous running or when it’s warmer, so those conditions work in our favour.”
“At the same time, I think in this performance, we have also contributed partly to the improvements that we have made to the car. We measure these improvements through downforce and you can see that in some low speed situations, we are very competitive now. of.”
“But we can see from the GPS data that some cars are still faster than us, which can only be said to confirm our development goals.”
Regarding the speed of the McLaren car in the race, Stella added: “While the aero efficiency of the car has improved, we have not made enough progress in terms of elements that can affect and improve race speed.”
“So I would expect that some of the cars around us will still be faster than us in the race, like the Ferraris, maybe the Mercedes, and we’ll see what the Aston Martin can do. And that will depend to a certain extent. The conditions in the race, for the same reason, the cooler temperatures should be in our favor, even in the races.”
Asked how many of the major problems with the McLarn cars have been fixed with upgrades, Norris said: “About 70% of the problems have not been fixed, and 30% of the problems have been improved, just by making the car faster, increasing the It performed better under the load.”
“I think what’s happening right now is that if we can push the load even further, we can solve more of the unresolved 70%, but that’s not the solution to all problems.”
“I think a situation like today proves that in some specific areas we’re not that far behind, it’s just certain features and controls, I would still say those are inherent issues that we’ve had over the last five years, we’re still trying to overcome it.”
2023 Formula 1 British GP broadcast moments
July 9th at 21:30 (Live on Weilai Sports Channel and Alda Sports Channel 1) official match
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