As part of a parts package introduced ahead of the French Grand Prix, McLaren has moved much closer to the direction taken by leaders Red Bull and Ferrari.
Before arriving at Paul Ricard , McLaren was in a relatively neutral zone of all the designs seen in that area.
Aston Martin originally stood at one end, opting for a tall sidepod solution, while Williams and Mercedes had opted, initially at least, for a very short, rapidly narrowing sidepod arrangement.
After Aston Martin and Williams abandoned their respective initial concepts, McLaren has been the latest to join the group. At this time, only Mercedes has decided to keep its compact pontoon design.
The design concept that McLaren had initially followed (above in the article’s lead image) is something that teams had been keenly pursuing in the earlier days of the regulations.
The designers aimed to narrow the body around the center line of the car and expose as much of the upper floor surface as possible.
That was made possible by the aerodynamic tools available to the designers to manage the wake from the front tyres. The pieces that made up the front wing, the flow through the brake line and the wheel designs, as well as the bargeboards, with their respective elements, helped to create an outwash effect.
Most of those tools have disappeared from the designers’ arsenal, and while teams continue to find ways to improve their weaponry, they can’t bring back all of that performance.
In addition, the operation of the ground in 2022 is very different, since much more attention is paid to the design of the tunnels under the bottom that feed the diffuser. The stiffness of the ground, the height of the car and its lean angle have also been drastically changed.
This has caused the bulk of the grill to opt for a more benign solution and put aside their desire for a tighter body and a direct increase in performance. Instead, they look to have a selection of surfaces that can act as a damper, thus realigning the airflow along the flank of the car, rather than trying to direct it with the front of the floor and sidepods.
The sidepod designs used for most of the grid therefore seek to mitigate some of the problems posed by front tire slipstream, by extending the length of the sidepod and creating a dividing barrier with the airflow passing over it. on top of it.
This primarily results in the use of a down ramp , which invites airflow to follow the contours towards the bottleneck region at the rear of the car.
As part of this design scheme, the top surface of the sidepod can also be fitted with cooling gills , which returned to the grille as part of this season’s rule change and allow heat generated within the sidepod to have an escape route.
That can also lead to the rear cooling output being smaller than it could be with other solutions, and aerodynamic gains could be achieved.
Detail of the flat bottom of the McLaren MLC36
In the case of McLaren, they have also chosen to place their cooling gills around the shoulder of the engine cover, in the same way that we have already seen Red Bull, Aston Martin, Haas and Ferrari do.
Modifications have also been made to the ground fence and brace system under the flat bottom, while the edge of the ground has been modified, as the team seeks to better influence the wake generated by the front tire, away from the car.
Further down you can see that the diffuser and rear riser have also changed quite significantly. Also, the floor stand is much shorter, as it is now connected to the sidepod ramp, rather than reaching all the way to the engine cover.
As part of this package of improvements, a number of reliability fixes have also been introduced, such as the cutout of the rear wing endplate , following an issue that had arisen in recent races.
Meanwhile, due to the heat, McLaren has also made some optimizations when it comes to rear brake cooling , with modifications made to the internal ducting to help channel airflow around the assembly more effectively.
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