McLaren have started the 2024 season in a reasonable fashion. At Suzuka, the Woking team managed to consolidate P3 in the Constructors’ Championship. They have scored more than double the points of Mercedes and Aston Martin in the first four races despite not bringing any major upgrades. Similar to Ferrari, performance has been unlocked by a better understanding of the MCL38.
MCLAREN: MCL38 IS MORE LIMITED THAN FERRARI SF-24
The Suzuka performance can be considered slightly below expectations for the English team, especially after the positive qualifying. However, we must consider the strength of the car brought to the track this season by Ferrari, which no longer presents important points weak in the various technical macro areas.
From this point of view, the MCL38 is more limited. Meanwhile, the Ferrari SF-24 and Red Bull RB20 are far more complete packages. As a result, it was not a massive surprise to see McLaren slightly behind their Austrian and Italian rivals.
McLaren’s super performance in qualifying, alongside an underwhelming Ferrari, slightly flattered the MCL38.
“In qualifying, we can count on positive factors for our car at low speeds,” stated Andrea Stella. “The new tyre, for example, allows us to spend a little less time in corners and its extra grip to compensate for some of our weak points.”
It is no coincidence that the MCL38 performed even better than the SF-24 at low speeds in qualifying. However, they were four-tenths slower than Ferrari in these sections on race day.
“In the race we used harder compounds, which expose the car’s weak points more. This is why we suffered a little more than in qualifying.” the Italian engineer and Team Principal announced.
FIRST UPDATES IN MIAMI, BUT MCLAREN ON THE DEFENSIVE IN CHINA
At Mclaren, they completely agree that the Japanese GP showed that the MCL38 is not yet at Ferrari’s level.
“The race definitely showed us that we still have work to do. We are not yet at Ferrari’s level, and we simply need to find a little more pace,” outlined Oscar Piastri. The first package of developments will arrive in Miami for McLaren, but this likely won’t be enough to catch Ferrari.
“Ferrari will also bring updates [to Imola], so it will become a race to see who can update best. But I think one update package alone won’t be enough to catch them,” said the McLaren team principal. Still, he remains confident there is still enough potential for the MCL38 to improve rapidly.
However, before the Miami Grand Prix, McLaren faces a potential boyleg circuit in China’s Shanghai circuit. The layout is certainly not favourable for the MCL38.
“There are too many low-speed sections and many sharp bends, so we will go to China to limit the damage,” said Stella. He pointed out that, in the coming months, the MCL38 should adapt better to all tracks:
“Once we have developed the car, we will talk much less about the type of layout that favours or disfavors us.” Still, the English team believes that “a better phase of this 2024 season” can begin from Miami. The development plan for the MCL38 will not stop soon, and more important things will arrive in the second part of the season.
And although ideally, a team would not want to have a Sprint weekend in a GP that has been absent for four years now, Andrea Stella tries to see the positive aspects.
“We have to look at it from the point of view of opportunities, and since our car has some intrinsic problems in slow corners, it’s not a bad thing that the others only have an hour of free practice to extract what we couldn’t do,” concluded the Italian engineer, with highly intelligent technical reasoning.
