The McLaren MCL36 of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris will be presented on February 11, in just over a week. Meanwhile, the Woking-based team has revealed some interesting details about how the car that will feature the return of ground effect and which will compete in the 2022 Formula 1 world championship will be developed.
This year, the budget limit should play a very important role in containing costs, as well as in the investment strategy that the teams will have to carry out during the course.
It is no coincidence that McLaren has decided to take a base MCL36 to the pre-season tests in Barcelona and Sakhir. The definitive version of the car, which should continue to wear a papaya-colored livery, will not be seen until the first weekend of racing, which will be held in Bahrain from March 18-20.
“We know that race performance is key, we will bring an upgrade package for that event, and we look forward to many more in the following races,” said Piers Thynne , McLaren team operations director.
“One of the reasons we don’t have too many components right now is because we know we are going to evolve the car. There are no prizes for bringing six different front wings to the first race of the year.
“We are going to take some slightly different approaches this year to make sure production capacity is good and responsive to aerodynamic evolution. This will be the key to success this year.”
“We’re very keen to get there as late as possible and reduce stock as much as possible, to make sure we have the opportunity to offer synchronized updates from race one.”
“The MCL36 program is very different from that used in previous single-seaters. It is more difficult and you have to take into account the budget limit, which makes this a big production and engineering challenge. You have to do a lot of teamwork, a great collaboration and a total concentration on the objectives”.
“Ultimately, it’s the quality of our people that we rely on when the going gets tough and we’re lucky, because our people are second to none.”
A new production strategy for McLaren due to the cost limit
Thynne explained the difference in the production philosophy of the new car’s components compared to previous years. The budget cap will force McLaren to work hard on the production strategy for the new MCL36 components.
“We will have fewer components available for the MCL36 than we did for the MCL35M. This will be done to have more room in the budget and to ensure better performance from the car.”
“We will never have too small a number of components to make the car work. We will always have enough, but where we used to do 5 or 6 parts, we will go down to 5. Where we would have done 4 or 5, we will do 4.”
“If we have more set-up options that can fit on one part, then we can look at rationalizing how those options are going to be taken, working with the race engineers to make sure we provide the options they want to take, focusing on the real ones and not the ones they might want to use, because every pound counts and we need to make sure we spend our money wisely,” Thynne concluded.
