McLaren unveiled a new kit in Baku representing the car it thinks it should be using this season, sticking to a different floor philosophy in an attempt to address the inefficiencies of the Woking team’s release-spec MCL35.
But while the new floor provided a small boost after it was installed at last week’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, the car’s continued inefficiency was still evident, with Lando Norris unable to overtake Haas’ Nico Hulkenberg for much of the race before finishing ninth. Lack of top speed.
“Well, we still have too much drag, that’s obvious, so we need to create downforce without drag,” said Brown, whose team is fifth in the standings, benefitting from rivals Alpine. misfortune.
“We did bring something new to the car. We knew, as we said at the beginning of the year, that the start would be a bit slow, so it’s good to see the team upgrading.
“There’s more, but that’s what the other nine teams are doing.”
Baku’s new sprint format, with only one 60-minute practice session, did not help the team upgrade the street circuit.
As such, Brown reckons his team will be able to extract more potential from the new combination with more free practice at this weekend’s regular-form Miami Grand Prix.
“I think we still need to take into account that Baku is a sprint race and it will take a few meetings to see exactly what’s going on and adjust,” he added.
“So, I think we’ll continue to learn this weekend.”
The Baku upgrade is the first of several planned improvements, with a bigger “B-spec arriving” ahead of the summer holidays.
The development program is led by McLaren’s new technology structure, implemented by team boss Andrea Stella, empowering three technical leaders rather than one technical director, while also poaching staff from rival teams.
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Brown believes the team’s next upgrade will benefit from personnel adjustments.
“What we’ve done is optimize the organization and really clarify the roles,” Brown explained.
“(Andrea) found that we were not structurally optimized, so we set out to map out what the optimal structure would look like, and then populate that org chart.
“Then we wanted to make some changes to optimize the new structure, so there is energy and clarity inside the MTC.
“I think the upgrades that are about to start now are starting to show the work that we have on the new structure and hopefully that will continue this year.”
Max Verstappen won the Monaco Grand Prix for the second time in his career. There was – not for the first time – admiration in the international press for the reigning world champion and his Red Bull Racing team.
When the first signs of showers hit certain areas of the track, Alonso switched from his hard to the medium tyre.
He pitted again soon after the rain picked up and spread across the track.
Alonso retained his second place, but Clarke insisted he would still not be able to beat race winner Max Verstappen had the Spaniard made a single pit stop instead of two.
He stressed that Silverstone made the right decision using the information available at the time.
“We need to look at how the whole thing is going,” Clark said. “Obviously in a situation like this, when you really don’t know what’s going to happen, you try to stay out as long as possible.
“Honestly, we didn’t expect this much rain. So we thought it was just a short shower and it would dry out quickly because the track was so hot. And then usually, you’d say, well, let’s stay One lap, two or three more laps, but the tires are worn out a lot.
“And we saw that the temperature was dropping. So it was a bit of a risk. When the car came in with this information, we said, well, let’s install the medium. But then the car drove away, and it didn’t take long before we saw the rain. Really big. We had to come back.”
Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing, 1st position, Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin F1 Team, 2nd position, spraying champagne on the podium
Clarke admitted that the team did not expect the rain to intensify in such a way and did not think it would be enough for Inter to hang on.
“Honestly, we thought we could go through with medium because it dries out so quickly,” he said. “But then we misjudged the rain because it took a long time in this part of the track (the pit lane) to start to rain.
“There’s also this area, which has had the least amount of rain. So it might have been a bit of a miscalculation, because we also thought the middleware would wear a lot on this part of the track.
“At the end of the day it was a conscious decision to use the media. Then we saw after one lap that it wasn’t working. We decided to call him back.”
Clarke said Alonso didn’t lose the win: “No, I don’t think it lost. Because if we installed the middleware, Max would also have the middleware. And he has the gap. So I don’t think it will change a lot.
“I think in general we can’t get too greedy, we should look back and see what we were aiming for. We came here to be better than what we’ve done so far. I think we did. And I think Red Bull A little too fast for us.”
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Krack also noted that it was safer to stick to the call for skinheads than to make last-minute changes, which could lead to confusion.
“As I said, the calls are made in a very short period of time. Then you have to live with it and when you decide, you have to execute. Because otherwise you’d have two wet tires and two slicks on the car .
“So once you make a decision, you have to execute. Because anything you try to recover, it’s going to go completely wrong. We’ll look at it, we’ll learn from it, and we’ll try to do better next time.
“We have a good understanding between the drivers and the team. Sometimes the drivers say you let it go. In this case we decided to install the slick. Fernando was happy with that. Then he was also happy to get the middle man back on the field !”