McLaren admit their transformative upgrade for the MCL60 was inspired by Red Bull’s RB19 and say they are finding more performance gains after following their rivals’ lead.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the British GP, while McLaren’s Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri both took their best results of the season in second and fourth respectively, having qualified second and third.
McLaren introduced the first stage of its upgrade a week earlier in Austria, on Norris’ car only, before bringing further parts for both cars at Silverstone. This was their first significant performance upgrade of 2023 so far.
The MCL60 lagged off the pace when it was introduced, which led to the departure of James Key as technical director and a reorganisation of the division he previously headed up. McLaren has made major appointments to its technical team, some of which will not arrive until next year, but a change in development direction has already begun to take effect.
The team brought a floor upgrade in Baku as proof of concept for the direction they were taking with future updates. “That was just an upgrade from a conceptual point of view,” McLaren team principal Andrea Stella told media including RaceFans at Silverstone. “It brought some lap time, but it was less than potentially a couple of tenths.”
That was followed by the major overhaul which started to arrive at the Red Bull Ring. “The step we have made with Austria is potentially an even bigger conceptual step than Baku compared to the launch car,” said Stella.
This shift has opened new avenues for the team to add performance to its car. “The good thing is that all the aerodynamic department, and in general the engineers at McLaren, have kind of accelerated this development,” Stella explained. “And now we are finding directions and we are finding performance quicker than we were in a condition to do before.”
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McLaren aren’t the only team to have drawn inspiration from Red Bull’s design philosophy, or indeed that of other rivals. “Every team takes inspiration from any other team, teams are equipped to try and absorb IP [intellectual property] from looking at the photos, from looking at the cars on display on Friday.”
But while teams “do take inspiration from the other cars”, Stella pointed out that adopting proven design ideas from another design won’t necessarily make their car quicker unless they understand how it works and can be applied to their existing design.
“Taking inspiration or even looking at a photo doesn’t mean that you copy the geometry, you install it in your CFD runs – in the computer simulation or in the wind tunnel – and the car lights up in terms of downforce,” said Stella. “Normally what happens, it [downforce] goes down because your car is already optimised around what you have done up to that point.
“So the key element is understanding that some concepts have more potential that will allow you to develop faster and for longer. And here is where you need to have the right people at the right place.”
The staff member Stella singled out for praise in delivering their latest upgrade has a Red Bull past – though he was last at Milton Keynes almost a decade ago. Aerodynamicist Peter Prodromou was previously at McLaren until 2006, when he left along with star designer Adrian Newey.
While Newey remained at Red Bull, Prodromou rejoined McLaren in late 2014. During their technical reshuffle earlier this year, when the team also secured the services of Red Bull’s Rob Marshall from next year, Prodromou moved into the role of technical director of aerodynamics.
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“I would like to mention one name here, Peter Prodromou, he’s leading the aerodynamic development at McLaren and he’s doing an exceptional job in terms of setting the conceptual direction, but also having organised and having inspired the entire dynamic group,” said Stella. “So really well done to Peter.”
However Stella admitted McLaren still have a long way to go to match the dominant performance Red Bull have produced since the current technical regulations were introduced. “The reality is that when you look, for instance, at the floor of Red Bull in Monaco, you see that there’s another step,” he noted. “So there’s again, even in this area, [more] work to do.”
After the two MCL60s took up their places on the grid ahead of Sunday’s race, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted he took the opportunity to look them over.
“It’s a very similar concept,” he said. “I was looking at the car on the grid, it’s the first time we’ve really seen it this year, and you can see the philosophy they’ve borrowed is very similar. So they’ve chosen obviously a similar path.”
Such similarities are “always” a compliment to his team’s work,” said Horner. “It’s flattering, isn’t it?”
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