McLaren

DAS steering cheaters

 

How can that be legal?

 

Brad Pitt took a later model Mclaren F1 car at COTA and drove it around. It was a private session. Looks like he had fun or made an error into T1.

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Didn't Mercedes get caught doing the same thing with the steering wheel moving forward?

 

Das system. Fia let them keep it I believe

 

It wasn't forbidden by the existing technical rules, that's why.
The FIA had to re-write them to ban DAS the following year.
It's not unusual for engineers to be one step ahead of the rule makers.

 

Yeah because it was Mercedes and Lewis. No other team took advantage

 

No they didn't want to waste time and resources in a system that was going to be banned for the next season.
That was a logical decision, IMO.

 

It did well during the season though.

 

Any car with caster at the front has camber gain as one dial in more steering.
By making the steering arms non-coaxial, one can get the caster to also provide toe movement with steering input.
So, simply turning the steering wheel changes alignments.

 

I was rooting for them, but it looks like McLaren will eat their words..lol

 

We want innovation. We get cost cap, crap tyres and 'events' and less racing! The NetFlix Tyre Management Racing Series for Dummies. Hit your Insta and tell a friend.

 

If its not against the rules then thats an FIA problem. This is how its always been. Innovation then its digested etc.

 

Exactly. A basic cost benefit analysis.

 

Definitely.

 

it depends if this Mclaren system is activated through a button/command or just ''natural'' through steering movement. If the latter it's fine (so long a ''switch'' isn't activated at steering input), if former, well it's not legal .

 

HOT off the press.......Never saw this coming.

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that definitely wasn't on my bingo card

 

Things are moving fast at McLaren:
- new Emirati owners
- a merger with another constructor, Forseven.
- more street cars in future, possibly SUVs and electric.
- now a new CEO (if that's what it is, or another member of the board perhaps ?).

 

Reporter asks: " So Luca, how does McLaren F1 compare to Ferrari F1?

(I bet he gives a very diplomatic answer as to not bad mouth the Scuderia since he's Italian and did run the Ferrari Organization in his tenure.)

I bet the Italian tabloids are going to be somewhat "critical" of their ex-Ferrari boss being the Director of the "enemy."

 

As to LdM:: Ferrari got rid of him too soon.

As to McLaren: Why do they need even more road cars that are not selling ?!?

 

From what we know about the merger between McLaren and Forseven, the group would market light electric sportscars, more affordable than the present range. There is apparently a gap in the market for such vehicles.

 

So possibly balance and track specific advantage for Mclaren this weekend: https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mark-hughes-has-upgraded-mclaren-gone-from-best-to-unbeatable/
Mark Hughes: Has upgraded McLaren gone from best to unbeatable?
Jun 28, 2025
by Mark Hughes

Lando Norris said on Friday that he thought the others would catch up on Saturday, as per usual. He couldn't have been more wrong, as he took his McLaren to Austrian Grand Prix pole position by a resounding half-second margin.

Every other car was in and out of balance to wildly fluctuating extents according to track temperature and its effect on the C5 soft tyre - and this is a track where balance has greater authority than maybe any other on the calendar.

Track temperatures and Pirelli tyres always have a volatile effect on the competitive hierarchy. But at a place where balance trumps even downforce, the swings were spectacular as the form followed the temperature.

So at various phases of the weekend we've seen Racing Bulls, Aston Martin, Alpine and Sauber looking sometimes untypically good, other times not so. We've seen Williams fall drastically off form despite initially looking good. We've seen a Mercedes which was the outright fastest on the green track of FP1 on Friday but which has disappeared from view since. Just as it always suspected might be the case around a long-corner circuit such as this, one so much more demanding of the car's particular limitations than Montreal.

To a lesser extent this happened to Red Bull too. "When the temperatures came up, it took the car out of balance," explained team principal Christian Horner.

"As they came back down towards the end we were beginning to look better and I think Max was on for a P3 on the grid. His last lap was predicting at a 1m04.4s [which would have been second] but then he got the yellows for [Pierre] Gasly's spin and had to abort."

"It just all fell apart," said Verstappen. "There was no balance and the front and rear were both giving up at different points in the corner."

But even at its best, the Red Bull was not a McLaren match. The understeer through the long Turn 6-7 sequence cost it two-thirds of its laptime deficit to McLaren there. But even like that, it should really have been the next-best here. That it wasn't - with Verstappen way down in seventh behind Liam Lawson's overdelivering Racing Bull - was mostly circumstantial.

Yet despite Norris's huge advantage on such a short lap (the biggest percentage pole advantage anyone has had all year) McLaren did not lock out the front row. Oscar Piastri was denied his second Q3 lap because of the yellows for Gasly's spin. It meant the lap was over before it had even started.

His first Q3 time was good for third. But at no stage in the weekend was he on Norris's devastating pace.

The fundamental unsuitability of the Mercedes to the track - George Russell and Kimi Antonelli a respective fifth and ninth quickest - and the temporary unbalancing of the Red Bull at the crucial time ensured that the status of second-fastest car was wide open. So it was that Charles Leclerc - every bit as spectacularly good around this track as Norris - ensured that it was Ferrari which achieved that status.

At half-a-second off the pace, no one was getting too excited about that. That said, the all-new floor (canoe section, diffuser, floor edges and vanes, ie everything) represents a very serious update and all the signs are that it is working well. Maybe when it is combined with the new rear suspension, the Ferrari will be back to being the second-best car on a more secure footing. For now, its race prospects against McLaren really would hang on it being easier on the tyres and perhaps that giving it access to a special strategy.

Lewis Hamilton was fourth fastest, and close to at least matching Leclerc until the car's bugbear of rear locking around here (guaranteed to be exposed by Hamilton's late-braking style) cost him vital time.

The Ferrari at least had a balance and on this day that was enough to put it ahead of Verstappen and Mercedes. But the McLaren's balance was there at a much higher aerodynamic grip level.

Within that big picture, factor-in also how special a place this is for Norris. These long corners really work well for his combined braking/cornering technique - and here he felt the Montreal suspension tweak really was working for him, giving him access to his special stuff.

In addition, McLaren brought some pretty significant upgrades here. The front wing/suspension sheaths and brake ducts brought a quantifiable aero advantage and the new rear suspension geometry - designed to give stability in the high-speed entries - complemented that.

Typically this year the McLaren has been slower than the Red Bull in the high-speed sections. But here - even before Red Bull fell out of the window - it was quicker.

Could that be a game-changer for the remainder of the season? Has McLaren, with that upgrade, just transitioned from the best car to an unbeatable one? Or has the effect been enhanced by this track and how it lends itself to the Norris effect? Let's see at Silverstone next week.

 

Well when you are not as savvy as Oscar you need help lol. Oscar is the kind of driver Norris wishes he was in my opinion. Oscar was the faster driver. The team appeared to almost help Norris overtly lol. Oscar is the better racer. 1 lap speed is nice but Norris needs to be a better racer over the longer term. Oscar shows more capacity vs Norris with less time in F1.

What's behind McLaren's heavy Norris coaching in F1 Austrian GP?
Busy radio chatter between Lando Norris and his McLaren race engineer caught the eye in F1 Austrian GP win

 

Why McLaren keeps bringing upgrades it doesn't (instantly) race
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why-mclaren-keeps-bringing-upgrades-it-doesnt-instantly-race/

With the fight at the front of Formula 1 so close, you would think teams would be desperate to bolt on upgrades as soon as they are ready.

Even if a new front wing or floor tweak brings only a few hundredths of a second, with the way things are at the moment, that could still be the difference between grid positions.

Yet this year championship leader McLaren has taken a more considered approach to bringing improvements to its car.

Yes, the upgrades are still coming through the system, but more often than not it has tested parts on a Friday and then parked them for the rest of the weekend – only bringing them back into action at a later event.

It was the case again at the British Grand Prix, when a new specification floor was evaluated in first free practice.

The new design featured a more aggressive flow-scavenging mechanism, and was ultimately aimed at improving airflow under the car and redistributing suction to gain overall aerodynamic performance.
But, as team boss Andrea Stella later confirmed, McLaren never intended from the off to race it.

"The plan was always going to be that the floor was a test floor to have an early read as to this new specification," he said. "[Especially] because the next race is a sprint event, in which it is more difficult to introduce a new specification and make the proper comparisons.

"We are actually pretty pleased with what we have seen in free practice one, and all the indications seem to lead us to introduce this new floor for the coming events."

What happened at Silverstone is just the latest chapter in a consistent McLaren tactic.

In Austria, it raced with a new front wing that it ran as a test item in Canada two weeks earlier and was intended to complement some new suspension

At the Spanish Grand Prix, its new toughened front wing aimed at passing the FIA's stricter flexi wing checks had been run briefly in practice at Imola a fortnight before.

And rewind even further to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in April, and McLaren tried out a diffuser tweak as a test item that it subsequently did not race.
fairings.

This policy of bringing upgrades but not committing to them straight away could come across as upgrades not delivering the improvements that had been hoped for.

After all, if there is free laptime on the table then teams would be foolish not to take it immediately.

But that is an oversimplification of how car development works right now, as teams have hit a ceiling in terms of adding obvious performance to the car.

The level of improvements being brought through floor or front wing tweaks are not the sort of thing that can be felt from the cockpit, nor even perhaps measured properly on the stopwatch considering weekend factors like a track rubbering in and tyre degradation.

Instead, as McLaren technical director (engineering) Neil Houldey explains, for a team like his to be absolutely sure that an upgrade is working can take a fair bit of analysis back at the factory.

"It's very difficult at the moment to actually test things because the numbers are so small for some of these parts in terms of laptime," he said.

"You're going on pressures on the car to really understand if they're making a difference. So it's never laptime anymore.

"It's really about checking on the loads on the car and the pressures on the car to see how they've reacted and if that's the same as in the [wind]tunnel."
This is all about engineering discipline – something that has been a hallmark of the progress that McLaren has made in recent years to push itself to the front.

One of the few important changes that McLaren has introduced and committed to racing from the off this year was the revised front suspension geometry that Lando Norris has used since the Canadian GP.

But with that being much more about driver feel than an out-an-out performance improvement – with the team referring to it more as a difference rather than an upgrade – it is something that can be better validated from the cockpit rather than through numbers on a computer.

Houldey explained: "These are small changes and really, without back-to-backing them, which we didn't do, the changes that we have assumed have worked in the right way. "He didn't complain and we know that they should be better, so we're keeping them on the car."
There is one caveat to McLaren's structured approach to upgrades so far though – and that is that it appears to still have a decent competitive margin so it has a luxury of doing things the way it wants right now.

It's not battling to catch up with a rival and it's not in a situation where it seems to be at risk of losing a championship if it does not bring onboard as much performance as it can.

Whether it would be able to maintain its policy were it locked in a tougher fight remains to be seen, but for now testing parts – which has included various beam wing solutions – is all about giving it ever greater freedom to fine-tune the MCL39 for each event.

"We've added parts to the car now and really there's set-up options that people will take forward depending on the track, and depending on the driver," added Houldey. "We're really out of that point where big upgrades are making a difference and actually we're bringing options. Different circuits are going to offer different amounts of performance, and we'll be trading those at each event as we move forward."