The Woking -based team started the 2022 campaign on the wrong foot, as brake problems at the final pre-season test in Bahrain caused it to lack pace in the opening race of the year.
The extent of the difficulties faced there prompted McLaren to put in place a recovery plan to get back to the front of the midfield. It seems to have worked as they are in the middle of a fight with Alpine for fourth place in the constructors’ championship.
But one of the results of that plan was that McLaren opted for a series of major, spaced-out updates , rather than constantly bringing new parts to every race.
Often, it has been precisely this that has put them out of the game, as their rivals take a step up in performance every race, when they receive new parts.
James Key , McLaren’s technical director, wanted to discuss the team’s decision-making process and its choice to carry fewer but more significant updates. The engineer stated that everything had been decided since what happened in the first race.
“To be totally honest, when you have a surprise like the one in Bahrain, you have to come up with a plan,” Key explained. “When you make a plan, you put everything in the same direction, since it is very difficult to stop a plan.”
“I put a lot of emphasis on this in every team I’ve been on: Have a good career to start with, and you open the door to freedom. If you have a surprise, you’re like, ‘Jesus, is that where we are?’ That’s how we thought it had happened to us.”
“Luckily it wasn’t, but it could have been. So you have to say, ‘OK, this is what we’re going to do, and in this race and that race over there we’re going to make a big jump.'”
“And this is still kind of an outgrowth of that.”
“I think if you can bring things in little by little, it’s definitely easier on the workforce and more efficient. But this is a bit of a replica of the first race.”
“The development plan has also been structured and clear timelines have been set, which I think the team appreciates. I would love to have a more gradual approach, but that’s where we are at the moment.”
Key suggests that fluctuations in teams’ form, such as when McLaren were clearly ahead of the midfield in some races but struggled more in others, could be a result of competitors being out of sync with updates.
Therefore, he did not get too carried away by the fact that Lando Norris managed to split the Mercedes in qualifying for last weekend’s French GP.
“We have very little memory in this category,” added Key. “We were quicker than Mercedes in Monaco, for example. A month or two later, and it’s like, ‘wow, you’re with Mercedes’.”
“We’ve done it before. But in that time, we’ve also had some really poor races. The reality is I think we were hoping to make a little step forward.”
“People are bringing updates at different times. I think Alpine brought one for Silverstone, for example. So we had a couple of races with an older spec of the car, and then we brought something. as we go forward.”
Although Norris was unable to match his great qualifying form in the Paul Ricard race, Key reckons the team just needs more time to better understand their package.
“Fundamentally, it has delivered what we thought it should, in most cases,” he said. “We are still analyzing the data, but the most important thing is that we have taken a step forward. It gives a better feeling, which was really important.”
“Now we have to use it and work with it to see if we can get a little more out of it and learn on different circuits. One of the problems we have had this year is that we have had ups and downs depending on the nature of the track.
“We’ll have to see if we can in Hungary, and I’m not saying we’re going to be with Mercedes in Hungary, but certainly stepping up to maybe where we were in Canada or Baku for example,” Key concluded.
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