By Carlo Platella
There is great debate in the paddock as to whether McLaren now has a more competitive car than Red Bull. What is certain is that the performances of the two cars are closer than ever, an awareness that is also evident from Lando Norris’ poorly hidden disappointment after the missed victory in Barcelona. The Woking team is now attempting to overtake, arriving in Austria with new updates to the MCL38.
Red Bull Ring News
The changes to the Austrian McLaren are all concentrated in the front end. In Styria it debuts a new front wing, refined in the profiles and in the external bulkhead of the endplates. The adjustments are minimal and not easily appreciable from the outside, but the gains are not necessarily equally small. In fact, the objective of the British team is to correct the structure of the flows that propagate from the front towards the center of the car, managing in particular the harmful turbulence produced by the front wheels.
The intention is to obtain a flow field that presents itself in better conditions at the entrance of the Venturi channels of the bottom, mitigating the impact of external turbulent flows. The same objective can be traced back to the front suspension arm fairings adjustmentsalso in this case difficult to appreciate from the outside. However, this is an area already affected by the Miami package, which shows how much McLaren is focusing on the front end to correct the flows towards the rear.
Great security
For the second time in a row, the Woking team introduces its updates during a weekend with the Sprint format, after the great package brought to the debut in Miami. It is the attestation of a McLaren that is pushing to accelerate the development times, strong of an excellent simulation-track correlation which allows it to introduce new features without fear of compromising the setup in a weekend with only one free session. The curiosity will be to see if Austria’s updates are actually the appetizer of a larger package, possibly planned for the home race at Silverstone.
