The fact that McLaren has performed well on high-speed circuits in recent years is reflected in the one-two finish at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix.
Aware that this strength went hand in hand with a clear weakness in the slower corners, the Woking team aimed to change the characteristics of its car with the entry of the new Formula 1 regulations for 2022, in order to stop depending on of fast corners.
In principle, it seems that McLaren has achieved that goal with the MCL36: “In a way we have compensated for the speed differences in the different types of corners,” said the British team’s technical director, James Key .
“We are strong in the medium speed corners. I wouldn’t say that the fast corners are a weakness, but we don’t stand out so much in that sense anymore, I would say that we are now in the middle zone. But in the slow corners we are no longer in the difficult situation we had before, when we couldn’t get the car to do what we wanted.
“Through the new regulations and the design, we have found directions that have definitely improved our performance at low speeds,” said the technical director.
“Some types of corners still have us a bit lost, but we no longer have this imbalance of being very strong in the high speed and being very weak in the low speed.”
And that, according to James Key , is very important in modern Formula 1, since the performance in the high-speed zone is becoming more and more similar for all the teams, so standing out in that sense is really complicated, while doing it at low speed it makes a difference.
“Now the low speed corners are the clear performance differentiator, because the high speed gets easier with the downforce of the cars,” said Lando Norris and Daniel Ricciardo’s team technical director.
And despite the fact that slow corners are no longer McLaren’s great weakness, according to James Key, the team still has a lot of work to do to become truly competitive: “We are not yet perfect at low speed, but it is not our great weakness either. , as it was in recent years,” he concluded.
