McLaren boss Adrian Stella has discussed a standout issue to its dominant MCL39 Formula 1 car that he says the team is working to address.
So far, the car been the class of the field, taking victory in all but one of the six Grands Prix so far this year.
The Woking-based squad is living up to its pre-season billing as the team to beat, currently leading the Constructors’ Championship by 105 points from Mercedes with Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris first and second in the Drivers’ standings.
However, Stella has publicly talked about a notable flaw in the car’s seemingly faultless DNA, which affect it over one lap.
“It’s a car that offers its best when you are in continuous laps rather than the one-off lap in which you push 100%,” he told media including Motorsport Week after qualifying for the Miami Grand Prix.
In effect, the MCL39 is failing to provide both Piastri and Norris with a feeling that allows them to find the limit under braking.
“We see with our car that occasionally we can produce really good corners, but it’s difficult to be repeatable for our drivers,” Stella added.
“Oscar made a comment, he said after the Q2 lap that he thought ‘wow, this corner 1 is so good I’m not sure I’m going to be able to repeat because I’m not sure exactly how I made it, because the car didn’t give me great feeling as to how this was happening’.
“It’s a car that doesn’t give you much cueing, which is the technical word we use. And this means that it’s not easy for our drivers to repeat some peak performances that we can see in the visual laps.”
A ‘numb’ feeling in the car the main cause of McLaren’s one-lap issue
Stella went into further detail as to what is causing this level of unpredictability in the McLaren car, putting it down to lack of feeling on its central shaft.
“The feeling coming especially from the front axle is relatively numb,” he continued.
“It means that the drivers have to sort of apply some judgement which is not necessarily based on ‘this is what I’m feeling therefore this is how I’m going to adapt’. It’s more based on what happened in a previous lap, if that makes sense? Which is not a comfortable position to be for a Formula 1 driver.
“You really like to have very clear information coming from your car.
“In terms of whether this is coming from mechanical, aerodynamic, or some other aspects, or tyres for instance, I think I’ve already given enough details and maybe we can expand at a future session once we have tested some of our options and hopefully I can report that we have even made some improvements.”
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