This data should worry McLaren

Hello to our regular newsletter readers, I hope you’re enjoying The Long Run. Those of you who have missed the previous few missives could always just find them in The Race Members’ Club now you’ve signed up (you’ve signed up, right?!).

Or alternatively, you could ask a classmate; I won’t consider it copying of homework or anything like that, because the whole idea is to spread the knowledge…

I once interviewed a race engine specialist, a very good one. I asked him what he attributed his success to and he replied that one very important factor was that he was open to others having thought of something before him.

He had plenty of ideas and innovations of his own but wasn’t too proud to keep an open mind in understanding what others may have done and seeing if he could make their ideas work – and if so he had no qualms about incorporating them.

We see F1 teams doing it all the time, of course. Without that, overall development would be much slower.

It’s also relevant to our sources of understanding as media and it’s here that I must refer you to the Substack of the excellent Ruth Buscombe, the former Haas and Sauber strategist and now F1 tv pundit.

She has put numbers on something very relevant to McLaren’s two consecutive victories from pole.

A few weeks ago my colleagues Ben, Edd and Jon wrote a story for The Race picking up on something McLaren tech director of engineering Neil Houldey had explained regarding the team’s choice of gearing for the MCL40.

We’ve known since the first race that the McLaren is significantly lower-geared than Mercedes (as the GPS data shows speeds and rpm), but Houldey was explaining that in hindsight they may have gone longer in both gearing and car wheelbase.

Obviously, the lower gearing will have pros and cons (as will the shorter wheelbase) and they will play out differently at different circuit layouts.

Hungaroring and Zandvoort – the tracks on which McLaren’s Lando Norris has just won twice from pole – are very favourable to the McLaren gearing.

Monza absolutely will not be.

So we should be careful about declaring McLaren now has the fastest car. It might not be. It’s just come off the two best tracks for its gearing in the calendar to date.

What Ruth has done in her Substack article, taking Houldey’s quotes in Jonathan’s piece and extrapolating from there, is to put numbers on how the differing gearing choices will line up with the remaining tracks on the calendar. It’s a brilliant piece and you should read it.

We knew from before the season even began that the McLaren had a significantly shorter wheelbase than the maximum permitted and that most of the others, notably Mercedes and Ferrari, had opted for the maximum length.

The longer the wheelbase, the greater the floor area and potential underbody downforce. But McLaren went 15cm shorter, making a shorter-cased gearbox to accomplish it, with the idea that those going for the full permitted length would not be able to get down to the new, lower minimum permitted weight.

But they did.

Regarding the gearing, at the maximum fuel flow (10,500rpm), the Merc, Alpine and Williams all pull 305km/h with their Mercedes PUs. Not surprising as they share the same gearbox.

McLaren does its own gearbox with its shorter gearing, so 10,500rpm in top equals 288km/h, and the gears below are shorter than their equivalent in the others too.

The penalty is on the long straights, as its fuel flow by regulation is decreasing beyond 288km/h while it’s not decreasing on the others until 305.

It will also use more fuel or battery energy (especially as the car is also short wheelbase which is inevitably more draggy than long wheelbase cars such as the Merc) at those speeds.

Obviously any circuit layout which doesn’t allow the engine to go past 10,500 for very long will be better for McLaren. Budapest is the best in the season to date for this, Zandvoort the second-best.

While in theory the shorter ratios will harvest more aggressively for the battery, the harvest limit is capped at 350kW. So the extra revs are not delivering extra harvest.

The longer-geared Merc can comfortably harvest at 350. It’s just extra engine braking for the McLaren. Which is sort of nice for the driver, gives a feeling of security at the rear, encourages them to commit on corner entry. But it’s not energy efficient.

The gearing will likely have influenced the car’s development direction too, as there will be more lap time to be derived from rear end downforce than on other cars, as the shorter gearing can induce wheelspin more easily.

Hence there’s more time to be found from increasing rear load than on a car with gearing that doesn’t bother the traction so much. But it usually brings drag. Which it already has too much of.

There’s nothing revelatory here, but in putting the pieces of the season’s jigsaw together and understanding what we are looking at it’s all valuable – and Ruth’s numbers can be a prism through which to view the remaining races.

Our overall knowledge has increased. Unless you weren’t paying attention at the back, of course…

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