The Brit GP Oscar penalty assessed. He was not dangerous!...
The Brit GP Oscar penalty assessed. He was not dangerous! https://www.planetf1.com/news/new-piastri-penalty-evidence-revealed-after-verstappen-brake-pressure-analysed
Speaks and thinks like an engineer who is bloody fast as well. Norris hardly 'won' Brit GP - utterly gifted. This gap should be much bigger than it shows. Go Oscar. Refreshing his thinking and composure is to most. Piastri's biggest McLaren complaint and an update aversion explained https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/piastris-biggest-mclaren-complaint-and-an-update-aversion-explained/
Bye Horner lol. You know you have lost when you spend this much time and effort and still flounder. Missing Newey even more and Wheatley. Good for Mclaren. Doing it right. RedBull and others doing this should pay as Mclaren suggest. Rather than pursue ideas for their own losing car they tried to force the FIA to reduce a competitors legal advantage lol. You wonder why he was fired................ https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mclaren-red-bull-hurt-itself-wild-f1-performance-theories/ McLaren reckons Red Bull actually hurt itself with allegations The scrutiny that McLaren found itself under for its car advantage earlier in the 2025 Formula 1 season ended up being reassuring for the team once it realised how much time Red Bull was devoting to its most wild theories. An increasingly bitter rivalry between Red Bull and McLaren reached a crescendo early in 2025 that McLaren boss Andrea Stella believes actually worked against Red Bull. Under the previous leadership of Christian Horner, who was removed from his role in July, Red Bull started to put pressure on the FIA last year to intervene over excessive front and rear wing flexing, and suggested McLaren may be trying to cool its tyres by adding water inside the wheel. When Red Bull failed to produce the step it expected for 2025 and McLaren raised the bar even higher, more in-season flexi-wing rule tweaks to both the front and rear wings changed nothing, with some inside McLaren actually of the opinion that reinforced its advantage. Red Bull then went even further as it pursued trying to work out how McLaren looks after its rear tyres better than anyone else; obtaining thermal images of McLaren's rear wheels from pitstops, and sharing a large dossier of theories with the FIA that included multiple ideas for very specific and almost entirely illegal tyre cooling trickery. Stella told The Race this had the potential to become a big "distraction" as McLaren has not found itself under such an intense focus in its modern era. But, he added: "We also felt like, if our opposition are so busy looking at that, they are actually the ones getting distracted. "It's almost a good thing, because it means that there will be senior people spending time to talk to the FIA, preparing dossiers. It's good that they pay attention on that rather than on the fundamentals of Formula 1. "That was quite reassuring, that actually there was a burden that was being paid by some of the teams that wanted to think that a team can be successful by exploiting regulations beyond what is allowed. "We have proven that you can be successful just focusing on yourself and focusing on the fundamentals from a technical and performance point of view." McLaren found the speculation about its supposed flexi-wing advantage last year and this year inaccurate but also within the realms of normal team politicking, as it was something Ferrari was also heavily involved with too. But it felt Red Bull went too far with certain theories and methods, effectively an extreme version of a tactic occasionally adopted by teams to smoke out what others might be doing. The accusations led to repeated looks at McLaren's wheel assemblies and brake system by the FIA, which included a detailed inspection post-race in Miami in May - all of which McLaren passed. Stella said this led to a conscious effort to remain "rational and factual" and to be "extremely collaborative with the FIA when they were doing their job and checking our car". "But the reality is that what we were hearing as allegations, immediately we realised, that's quite frivolous," Stella said. "In fairness, we always remained pretty, like, 'Let's not get absolutely distracted by this'. OK, it's going to cost us one hour, because for one hour, some people will have to show the FIA some parts. But that's not a distraction. This doesn't defocus us from doing what we are doing. "It's always a little bit of shame that currently, teams can make frivolous or inconsistent allegations, which generate work: work for the FIA, work for the team that is being checked. "And this goes to the advantage of the team that made the allegations, because now I have some work to do, just because there's some interest in my car, in just supporting the checks. "I don't have to modify anything, because there's nothing to modify, but it is a distraction or a potential distraction." McLaren still has an ongoing desire for there to be a greater financial commitment and burden of proof for a team to bring forward accusations in private. But it is interesting that McLaren believes Red Bull paid a price by devoting time, effort and brainpower of very senior engineering figures by getting them to prepare dossiers and engage with the FIA. Suggesting they were not paying attention to the "fundamentals of F1" is about as withering as Stella gets, and it may be that that kind of burden is something Horner's engineering-led successor as Red Bull team principal, Laurent Mekies, will be keen to avoid.
Go Oscar!! Piastri: Too early to "bank points" in 2025 F1 title battle with Norris McLaren's Piastri says settling for points, rather than taking opportunities to win F1 races, is "not a great way of going racing"
I hope they will pay up this time !! MasterCard not honoring their commitment was led to Lola bankruptcy.
Are the TV announcers going to be forced to mentioned Mastercard every time they say McLaren? Lame......
Mclaren is now rather valuable overall! McLaren Racing valued at £3.5bn after ownership change BBC - and F1i reporting this https://f1i.com/news/547460-mclaren-racing-valued-at-4-billion-as-gulf-shareholders-take-full-control.html BBC- https://www.bbc.com/sport/formula1/articles/cwypy6zpr39o
BBC Sport Comment below. Sure sort of a conspiracy type comment but most of it is utterly accurate. Mclaren are the largest loser of the weekend by design. Needless. Also remember how many laps Lando took to execute his team order last year in 2024 at Hungary. He took 10 laps. That says quite a bit about his desire for 'fairness'. Make him look all the more entitled overall. --Piastri given a penalty during British GP but they didn’t swap the cars to make it ‘fair’. Lando given a strategy to get give him track position in Hungary which he held onto and won the race ahead of Oscar who had been leading. Didn’t swap the cars to make it ‘fair’. Today a slow stop wasn’t Oscar’s fault, was asked to move out of ten way. McLaren have their favourite--
Not to mention that Oscar gave Lando a tow in Q2 otherwise he was looking at starting in position 10.
the lawsuit over Alex Palou's failed contract with McLaren is going on this week in London. Palou testified in court that Zak didn't sign Piastri, it was Andreas Seidl's decision. that should make the Oscar/Lando rivalry a bit more interesting Tweet— Twitter API (@user) date
McLaren wants the 20 million because with Palou they would be leading the Constructors standings and have the points leader in the Drivers' standings. Oh wait, nevermind...
For those who still do not understand why people are laughing at the whole Papaya rules thing, this short video sums it up perfectly well. It's extremely one sided. How McLaren’s ‘Papaya Rules’ Got Out of Hand
McLaren won't have full fix for F1 pitstop problem until 2026 Oct 13, 2025 by Jon Noble - The Race.com McLaren doesn't expect a full fix for its recurring pitstop problems until next year, but believes improvements can be made in the short term. A run of slow stops since the Dutch GP has highlighted that McLaren is facing challenges in this area, with team boss Andrea Stella suggesting a key factor relates to the design of the wheel guns, making life difficult for his personnel. While he was confident that the team can get on top of things in the short term, he suggested that things remain a work in progress for now - with a proper fix not coming in until 2026.
I wonder if “papaya rules” will come to haunt McLaren in the driver’s market. I can see a world in which one of their two drivers - Piastri likely - seeks to be released from their contract. What good, potential #1 driver would want to join? Yes, it’s a good car, but is it worth enduring the driver “rules” silliness? Perhaps the answer is in the question, and they wouldn’t seek another #1, but I have to imagine a lot of drivers, including one of their own, are looking askance at papaya management.
Interesting analysis. I think sometimes people forget that the most important thing to the manufacturer is the constructors title, while the drivers care more about the drivers title. Now that McLaren has the constructors title on lock, I wonder if this is why they seem to not be quite so dominant lately allowing Verstappen to catch up in points. https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a69154564/why-mclaren-opted-out-f1-development-race-2025/ In recent years, Formula 1 teams have been in a relentless development race throughout the season as they race to bring new parts to the track – albeit within the constraints of the FIA cost cap and the aero testing restrictions, which mandate Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and wind tunnel usage. However, the season prior to a major rule change, the pattern is very different, as teams have to split their aforementioned scarce resources between R&D for the current car and the future project. It’s a sort of game of chicken, with teams making the switch early, potentially seeing their short-term form tail off – something that has been apparent with Alpine, for example, after the team opted to give up on improving its 2025 model. Meanwhile, those pushing too hard and for too long with the current car risk falling behind rivals with the new project and might thereafter struggle to catch up. A fascinating aspect of the 2025 season is how this conundrum impacts the battle for the World Championship between the McLaren drivers Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris and Red Bull’s resurgent Max Verstappen. There’s been a clear trend: Red Bull has continued to bring new parts to the track, while McLaren hasn’t. And that is also apparent this weekend in Mexico City, a track where most teams traditionally introduce cooling tweaks to compensate for the thin air at high altitude. Red Bull has a package of items – including updates to brake ducts, the engine cover, and floor, in essence intended to optimise cooling as well as overall efficiency. In contrast, McLaren has nothing new, having some time ago switched off development of the current MCL39 to focus entirely on 2026. McLaren boss Andrea Stella insists that there’s a good reason why no fresh parts are coming through the system. "The 2026 project would be heavily compromised,” he says. "We want to win championships in the future. To win championship in the future, you need to have a competitive car. I think we have been very considerate in the timing of switching our full resources to 2026." Stella also makes the point that the MCL39 was a very good car from the start of the season, and was improved with updates up to the middle of the year. Latterly, it was a case of diminishing returns. "Our car, from an aerodynamic point of view, was already quite mature," he notes. "And to add one point of aerodynamic efficiency – like we have added more than one point when we upgraded our car around Austria, Canada, and so on – it takes weeks, because we were at a plateau in our aerodynamic development. With the 2026 car, every week we add a lot of downforce. So that's where, with the best information you have available, you have to make a call. "It's not like if I spend three weeks more on the 2025, I'm going to add one-tenth of lap time. We were just plateaued. Actually, to produce the upgrades that we took at the mid of the season, it was a huge undertaking. We were struggling to improve what was already a pretty mature project." It's also important to note that this season, as 2024 World Champions, McLaren has had the least CFD and wind tunnel usage of all the teams under the FIA handicap system. In contrast, having finished only third, Red Bull had a bit more leeway to continue to tinker with the current car. "By being the champions, we are the most restricted by the regulations in terms of the wind tunnel allowance and the CFD allowance," Stella confirmed. "So it's not like we have an unlimited amount of resources that we can use. "So we need to consider the way we allocate resources this year to next year, because it comes from the same pot when it comes to CFD and aerodynamic windtunnel testing. And like I said before, because we were so much in the diminishing returns, we needed to be realistic, and shift our attention to 2026." The flipside of that is, because it was born as a difficult car, Red Bull’s RBR21 needed more development—and thus a flow of new parts—to get it to where it is today. "I think it's much easier to develop when you have some specific problems,” said Stella. "And I think, for instance, for Red Bull, they talked at times of struggling to rebalance with the front wing when they were using big rear wings. Then it's easier to find lap time, because you are effectively fixing something rather than trying to improve something that already works. "Perhaps they had more margin to develop efficiently, focusing on 2025. And perhaps they are happier to give up a little bit on the 2026, because they might have some other issues for 2026 whereby they say, ‘Let's focus on '25'" Max Verstappen taking laps in this year’s RB2 in Free Practice 2 ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. That’s a clear and intriguing hint from Stella that he suspects that Red Bull may already know that it will face a tricky 2026 with its brand-new in-house Ford power unit. So if next season is going to be difficult, why not put a bit more effort into this year, make a difference, and bag a title? As for the specifics of Mexico, Stella insists that in any case, McLaren doesn’t need any special cooling tweaks for this race, because its base package is already very effective. "In reality, I'm positive about the fact that we come to Mexico and we don't have to change the fundamental way in which we cool the car," he notes. "We are actually using parts that were already available. One of the reasons why we perform well when it's hot, is actually the cooling technology that we use, and it's part of also the liquid. "We innovated from '24 to '25, and a lot of the innovation actually went in the cooling system. So I think some of the approaches I see on some other cars are more traditional,like "We have to have a Mexico-specific [package]". "It gives me an opportunity for a shout-out to the engineering team at McLaren that created such an efficient technology that actually works even in this not only thin air, but pretty hot air that we have this week in Mexico." So what of the Red Bull approach? The team insists that recent upgrades, including the modified floor deployed this weekend, have been cost-effective in terms of the resources used. But does the team still risk impacting 2026? "About this time next year, we'll get an honest answer, won't we?" says RBR chief engineer Paul Monaghan. "We have taken the choice. It's a 'make from,' so it's a previous floor that we've managed to recycle - it was sufficiently modular – to get it here. "The redistribution of cooling exits was found when we went through the last iterationof the top body, and we thought, 'Oh, we've missed that one. We can get it in here, though.' And some magical work in Milton Keynes, and it's here. So all credit to everybody that pitched in and got that done. We're in the midst of '26, yet we've managed to do that for here. So if we enjoy the benefits of it, then it was all worth it." Does Red Bull take any encouragement from the fact that McLaren has turned off the development tap and brought no new parts this weekend, and thus the extra effort might pay off? "I wouldn't have said that that's necessarily indicative,” says Monaghan. “Changes at this stage of our season, whilst visually might be large, aren't necessarily going to transform it. It's incremental. We'll chip away, low risk. I don't think the McLaren is that bad a car, is it? So we'll see how we get on…"
