Chris

After qualifying in COTA I had someone in the paddock tell me “watch out for McLaren. They have to run super low to be fast in the high speeds here.” Turned out to not be anything, but the background of the comment was more interesting to me. Speaking with a few Aeros from other teams there is one general consensus, The McLaren floor is not a downforce monster, but is a tradeoff for great corner balance. Many teams across the grid have chosen to focus on different methods for generating performance from their floors. I’ve heard McLaren uses the floor contraction and profiling to create a well balanced performance that isn’t a peak load monster. Meanwhile some other teams, like RBR, have chosen to try and manage complex vortex systems from the fences and floor edge to bring big loads. The downside of this is that it can be a bit temperamental and hard to keep this vortex systems healthy. I also heard that Ferrari is somewhere in the middle, while Mercedes, they believe, is closer to McLaren in their floor profiling. One aero told me that because of this McLaren have to run the car super low to extract the most performance they can. Well ya..of course. Venturi floors don’t come alive until they are super close to the ground. But the recent run of form from RBR has caused McLaren to push those limits even further than they were initially comfortable with. It’s something I was told about Ferrari some time ago as well. “some teams are pushing their ride heights to the absolute limit in practice and then walking it back.” It’s why you see some teams super fast in FP1 and FP2, but no where in qualifying. Teams are pushing the limits of everything to try and extract as much pace as they can, then bringing it back to sensible levels for the race. So what about the next few races? Well the consistency of the nature of the surface makes it easier to engineer to the limit. But IMO it won’t change the need to run lower to be competitive at the top. I think Macca will still feel pressure to run close to the limits to protect from a charging Verstappen. It’s up to RBR to get the setup right for a challenging sprint weekend in Qatar. If they do, Macca may be pressured to push the limits again. If not, they may engineer in some margin to be safe. It’s a complicated thing. How much performance can you extract without going over the top? Bringing in potential for excessive plank wear, or aero instability. As the pressure mounts we may see more teams taking big chance to be near the top. And guess what? McLaren isn’t immune from their either. Game on.