The British Grand Prix was a potentially seismic event for the 2023 Formula 1 season.
It’s not about to change the battle for the championship, but McLaren’s two-three qualification and two-four race result has the sport wondering whether its understanding of the frontrunning pack needs to be completely reconsidered.
That’s because these strong results were meritorious — and a far cry from what’s been expected of McLaren so far this season.
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Yes, there were conditions that undoubtedly minimised the MCL60’s weaknesses, with the slippery track on Saturday and cool conditions on Sunday meaning it was never at risk of overusing its tyres.
Silverstone comprising almost exclusively high-speed corners also plays to a well-established McLaren strength under these regulations.
But there were also things we saw in Silverstone that didn’t tally with our established understanding of how the MCL60 is supposed to work.
For one, Lando Norris almost pinched pole position from Max Verstappen, missing out by only 0.241 seconds.
More to the point, his race pace kept him directly behind the faster Dutchman for the first phase of the grand prix, and the car was quick enough to hold position all the way to the chequered flag.
This is despite a late safety car closing up the field and giving Mercedes a swing at snatching a double podium for itself.
In previous races the McLaren would’ve burnt up its tyres and sank back into the pack. Just think about the double Q3 appearance fading to nothing in Barcelona, a similarly high-speed circuit.
But in Silverstone McLaren changed the game. What happens next will be fascinating.
WHAT MADE THE CAR SO FAST?
Comparing data traces of Lando Norris and Max Verstappen’s final qualifying laps paints a telling picture of where McLaren has gained most.
There are only two key areas where the RB19 was faster: at the ends of the DRS straights and in the slow corners, namely the Village-Loop-Aintree complex at the start of the lap, the Vale chicane and, to a lesser extent, Luffield.
Little split them in the high-speed corners, including Maggotts and Becketts, and they were closely matched down the straights except where the trick Red Bull Racing DRS gave Verstappen a boost.
Compare that to the Spanish Grand Prix, where the Circuit de Barcelona Catalunya makes similar aerodynamic demands of the cars.
McLaren was running its previous aerodynamic kit there, and the contrast is stark.
Norris haemorrhaged time throughout the lap. He was no match down the straights or in the slow corners. The car’s high-speed strengths only just stabilised the losses elsewhere.
From that comparison we can make a key assessment: the upgraded McLaren car is more efficient, carrying less drag for every kilo of downforce. That means it can generate more downforce without costing itself straight-line speed.
We got a great example of that late in the race, when Norris was able to hold off Lewis Hamilton, who had the benefit of a softer tyre and the DRS.
“We have a little bit more drag down the straights,” Hamilton said. “Then through the high speed … that‘s where they were just murdering us.”
Efficiency is a big deal in modern Formula 1 given restricted budgets and development time mean teams can no longer manufacture bespoke parts for a single weekend. A 2023 car must be an all-rounder. The more efficient it is, the more flexible it can be from race to race.
With a more efficient package, McLaren has been able to load up on downforce, which both boosts lap time and also has beneficial knock-on effects to things like tyre wear, which was another critical problem of the old-spec car.
Awkard exchange in snubbed grid chat | 00:39
DOESN’T IT JUST LOOK A LOT LIKE A RED BULL COPY?
It’s tempting to say the team took a shortcut, and certainly some rivals are enjoying positing that theory.
“If you look at the car, it makes sense,” Hamilton said, per The Race. “If you just put it alongside a Red Bull, it looks very similar down the side, and it’s working.”
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff agreed with the visual assessment.
“From what you see from the outside, which is obviously only half the information, the car looks like a Red Bull,” he said.
Similar accusations have also been made of Aston Martin, the only other team to take a massive step forward year on year.
“It‘s good to see the old car going so well,” Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner joked after Fernando Alonso’s first podium this season.
But really we should be beyond that sort of judgment.
It’s standard for designs to start converging in the second year of regulations. Partly that’s because the restrictiveness of the regulations naturally usher teams towards fruitful development pathways over time.
It’s also because, yes, teams learn from and adapt trendsetting designs, but that’s only enough to eliminate some of the preliminary guesswork over development direction. It’s not enough to build a rapid car on a first attempt.
If it were so simple, every team would do it.
“Taking inspiration or even looking at the photo doesn‘t mean that you copy the geometry,” McLaren principal Andrea Stella said, per ESPN. “You don’t install it in your [computational fluid dynamics software], run it in the computer simulation or in the wind tunnel and the car lights up in terms of downforce.
“Normally what happens is the performance goes down because your car is already optimised around what you have done up until that point.
“The key element is understanding that some concepts have more potential that will allow you to develop faster and for longer.”
There are also no meaningful parallels with the infamous 2020 Racing Point ‘pink Mercedes’. Since that season the FIA has banned some prevalent extreme copying practices, like 3D photography that could generate models of bodywork. Today you’d have to manually recreate car parts based on regular photos.
More importantly, under this set of regulations the majority of performance is generated by the floor, not by the bodywork — and the floor is obviously hidden from view almost all the time. And no, there wouldn’t have been nearly enough time for McLaren to have copied Red Bull Racing’s floor after Sergio Pérez’s car was craned off track in Monaco barely a month ago.
Executing a functional copycat car is therefore practically impossible, particularly in the four months McLaren has had since pre-season testing.
Piastri shines with career best qualy | 01:21
SO IS McLAREN A FRONTRUNNER NOW?
It’s still too early to say.
While two strong results at two different circuits is a strong indicator, the sample size is still too small, especially given the Red Bull Ring and Silverstone share some key high-speed similarities. Last year’s underwhelming McLaren was also disproportionately competitive at both tracks.
And while a lot of the data trace at Silverstone compared the McLaren favourably with the Red Bull Racing car, slow corners remain a clear weakness, even if by less of a degree that they were before the upgrade package.
“We do have a poor car — and I say poor; I would say pretty terrible — in the slow-speed corners. Extremely difficult to drive,” Norris said.
“I feel if we’re getting excited, and I accept that, but we‘re going to go to a couple of tracks coming up where I’m sure people are going to be saying, ‘What have you done now? Like, how has it got so bad all of a sudden?’.
“A lot of it is track specific. I don‘t want to get too excited, good things have come from the upgrade, but there are still plenty of things which are a miles away from — say, competing in certain places with a Mercedes and as a whole package competing even with a Red Bull.”
The upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix at the slow-speed Hungaroring will be a telling test.
McLaren is almost certain to fare worse there than in Austria or Britain, though it’s unclear by how much.
If it keeps its place in the mix for the podium, this upgrade package will be considered a raging success.
If it drops to the back of this frontrunning pack but is still a comfortable Q3 and top-10 contender, then the new parts will still have been a meaningful improvement.
In the unlikely event it reverts to being a Q2 battler behind Alpine, then there’ll be some more head scratching to be done at Woking. That’s a worst-case scenario, however, and would be as big a shock as the team’s recent turnaround.
Whatever the case, Norris doesn’t see this upgrade package and development pathway as a silver bullet to McLaren’s long-term decline anyway.
To get back to regular race wins, a bigger overhaul is still needed.
“It‘s just some characteristics and handling that I would still say we’ve had as an inherent issue over the last five years that we definitely still struggle with,” he said.
“I think if we really can tackle those bigger problems, which are more fundamental and not [solved] just by adding [downforce], then I‘m confident we can have a much more competitive car from race one to race in 2024 next year.”
Really big car changes can only happen year on year — the budget cap prevents teams from developing entirely new chassis during a season, for example.
So while McLaren might have the genuine potential to run with Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston Martin this season and pick up meritorious podiums, closing the gap to Red Bull Racing remains a bigger task.
As Aston Martin is already starting to realise, the feel-good factor of a couple of podiums wears off relatively quickly.
The only target is to win, and that target is far from here.
But proving this upgrade package to be a success — and there are more new parts coming at the next race — means massive runs on the board for McLaren, its new structure and its design office. It’s a vote of confidence that the team as it is has the capacity to rise to the top again.
It’s hope that McLaren is finally back on track after a decade in the wilderness.