Gary Anderson, a former racing car designer and now an expert for The Race, tried to take a closer look at the new McLaren MCL38, and noticed a feature that raised questions for him…
McLaren’s main challenge for the coming season is to build on the successes achieved in 2023, when it joined the teams fighting for places just behind Red Bull Racing.
Achieving sustainable progress is never easy, but last season, while improving the car, McLaren identified those areas that were holding back the refinement of the chassis, so now, creating the MCL38, the team tried to expand the possibilities for further modernization.
Front fender
The front wing together with the nose fairing, as far as can be seen from the images of the car, are almost identical to last year’s version. But this area can be addressed later, when it becomes clear what solutions other teams have proposed.
However, the problem is that modifications to the front of the car can affect the airflow structure around the chassis as a whole. The front brake ducts have a slightly different configuration, but these elements change depending on the characteristics of a particular route, since the load on the brakes varies and, accordingly, they require different levels of cooling.
A couple of years ago in Bahrain, McLaren had problems with brake cooling, so now the team is trying to avoid such risks.
If we talk about the front suspension, the location of the front mounting point of the upper wishbone is almost the same as it was on last year’s car, but the rear mounting point is clearly shifted lower. The location of the suspension linkage and lower wishbone remain the same.
Radiator air intakes
Some surprises are caused by the changes that have occurred with the radiator air intakes. McLaren has moved away from the general trend, which can be seen in all the cars we have seen this year, and which they followed in 2023 and in Woking, i.e. The air intakes on their MCL38 are now not the same as Red Bull’s. Now this area is not so slanted, but rather “looks” forward.
Judging by the photographs taken from a side angle, the profile of the pontoons and adjacent body parts are generally similar to those on last year’s car. You may notice that the cooling system louvres have become larger and moved forward, but all this may change depending on the requirements of a particular route.
Rear suspension
The rear suspension configuration remains the same as last year. But if the rear attachment point of the upper triangular arm is located on the car body in the same way as before, then the front attachment point is shifted lower – this makes it possible to more effectively counteract the unwanted rise of the rear of the car during braking.
conclusions
Since no detailed images of the rear of the car were presented, it is difficult to analyze anything here, but we can assume that in terms of aerodynamics everything remains largely the same as it was at the end of last season. But changes in the configuration of radiator air intakes raise questions.
It seems that in the off-season the team paid maximum attention to stabilizing the aerodynamic platform by upgrading the chassis: now the front suspension better resists chassis dive, and the rear suspension better resists lifting of the rear end during braking.
McLaren is probably generally pleased with the performance of the aerodynamics,
and if its parameters are now better controlled, they are confident that they will be able to further improve the efficiency of the chassis. As the team gathers information about the MCL38’s on-track performance, intensive aero upgrades will continue.
2024-02-14 18:50:00
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