(Motorsports news) When McLaren unveiled the MCL60 ahead of Formula One’s pre-season test, it offered a bleak picture of what it had constructed. Andrea Stella, team head, admitted that the team was “not entirely happy for what is the launch car” because it recognized it had neglected some key design concepts when putting the package together. “There’re some areas in which we kind of realised a little late in development, some really strong directions,” he stated.

Outwash front wing:

McLaren has joined other teams in developing a front-wing design that produces as much outwash as possible. This was accomplished by improving the gap management between the flaps and the endplate, as well as the shaping of each aerofoil across the span. As Stella stated, newer cars cannot produce as much outwash as past generations, but doing what you can is still quite beneficial.

“Even if this generation of cars inherently reduced the outwashing massively compared to the previous generation of cars, teams are all trying to pursue this objective,” he stated. “Every little bit you cash in gives you better characteristics, especially in the medium/low-speed corners.”

Wider sidepods with water slides:

McLaren had previously gone to the Red Bull-style downwash solution for its sidepods in 2022, but it has accelerated the process significantly this year. In this region of the automobile, it has pursued two fundamental concepts: making the sidepods as wide as possible with a large undercut, and then maximising what has become known as the water slide.

“It’s very noticeable how much wider it is,” Stella remarked. “McLaren’s trying to create a clear pathway for energising the airflow.” The large sidepods and sharp undercut help engage with the floor for increased downforce, while the water slides help channel air to better utilize the diffuser.

Return of the floor edge wing:

The floor design is crucial to success with ground effect automobiles since it provides so much downforce when done correctly. It’s the one area of the cars where teams are incredibly private – and it’s no wonder given how much work it takes to get it right. According to Stella: “The detailed work under the car is one of the most sophisticated and, from an engineering point of view, fascinating thing I’ve ever seen.”

McLaren resurrected the edge wing, which it had tried out at the start of 2022 before abandoning, to improve the floor performance from the Singapore GP. “It closes a little bit of a loop because, in 2022, our shakedown car had this kind of wing, which was adopted by some competitors,” stated Stella. “Then we realized we needed to go through the process of removing this for some time, so we had the skate under the car.”

“Then it became clear that some other cars had already removed the skate at the start of the season, so we changed as well.” This section of the automobile provides a lot of performance.” Other aspects had to be examined as a result of the new restrictions, including ride height, which appears to have caused a trade-off between the benefit of skating solutions and employing an elongated edge wing.

Beam wing efficiency:

With Red Bull’s competitors catching on to the fact that the RB19’s DRS is so effective due to the drag balance between the rear wing main plane and beam wing, McLaren has followed suit. McLaren began reducing the drag of its beam wing after the Belgian Grand Prix in the belief that this would help improve the effect of DRS.

“We are working to create the right arrangements of beam wings so that we can achieve the right level of drag without having to reduce the size of the upper wing too much,” he stated. “The beam wing here in Japan is relatively offloaded compared to some of the beam wings we were having at the start of the season.”

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