Tag Archives: McLaren

Max Verstappen says he’s “not going to cry” about receiving two 10-second penalties in the Mexico City GP while also refusing to give an opinion on the decision made by the FIA stewards.

Just a week after their incident in Austin Verstappen became involved in another battle with title rival Lando Norris.

The Red Bull driver received his first penalty for forcing Norris off-track at Turn 4, and then received another for gaining an advantage by going off track at Turn 7 a few seconds later.

He dropped to 11^th when served the combined penalties at his pit stop, and eventually recovered to finish sixth.

“Honestly, 20 seconds is a lot, but I’m not going to cry about it, and I’m also not going to share my opinion,” said Verstappen.

“The biggest problem that I have is that today was a bad day in terms of race pace. That was quite clear again, on the mediums and on the hard tyres.”

Pushed on the incidents he said: “I just felt that the Turn 4 was bit more of like a question mark. Turn 7 is what it is. That’s it.

“Honestly, those two things are also not my problem. The problem is that we are too slow, and that’s why I’m being put in those kinds of positions. That is my problem.”

He added: “We didn’t touch, so we’re just racing hard.”

When I asked if he was satisfied with discussions about FIA driving guidelines over the Mexican weekend he downplayed their significance.

“At the end of the day, everyone speaks for themselves. Of course, can the rules be better? Maybe, yes, maybe not. It’s always the same thing.

“I mean, I just drive how I think I have to drive. Last week that was all right. This week, 20-second penalty. It is what it is. Life goes on.”

Expanding on his trouble race he made it clear he had several issues.

“I mean, to get back to sixth was alight, but then I couldn’t even find the Mercedes cars in front,” he said. “I just had no grip. I was just sliding a lot. I couldn’t brake so, yeah, it was very tough one.

“We’re trying. Austin was more promising, here again was a bit more tough, so it’s a bit odd. But a few things to look at, and hopefully of course in Brazil we can be more competitive.”

Regarding his trimmed championship lead he said: “It’s still 47 points. So hopefully we could just be a little bit more competitive.”

                                                                                                                       

Sainz found a way past Verstappen to reclaim the lead

Mexico City GP winner Carlos Sainz says that drivers need to be “determined” and “decisive” when battling for position with Max Verstappen.

From pole Sainz lost the lead to the three-times World Champion on the first lap having run wide over the grass, but he repassed him at the start of the ninth lap.

From there the Ferrari driver put in a faultless performance to log his second win of the 2024 season, and the fourth of his career.

“I didn’t get a good start, but at the same time, I think Max tends to start very well,” said Sainz. “Here is very low grip, and whenever there’s low grip, the Red Bull tends to start really well.

“So I was kind of prepared also for a scenario where Max was going to go alongside me into Turn 1. I braked as late as I can brake, and he brakes as late as me, and I had no space to go into Turn 2.

“And from then on, I didn’t lose my head, and I knew that every half opportunity that I got to the lead back, I would try and do it. And yeah, with Max, you need to be determined, you need to be decisive.

“If you’re not, you’re never going to pass him. And in that case, I think I caught him a bit by surprise, and I could make it stick.

“High tension at that point, also because then that initiated a fight behind me that nearly got me involved also from what I heard. So, yeah, it was an exciting moment of the race.”

Asked to explain how he pulled off the pass Sainz said: “Before Turn 1 I got a really good tow on DRS, but I saw that I was probably going to be a bit too far back.

“But then right in the last 100 metres, I felt like I had a good momentum and I’ve been feeling very confident braking into Turn 1 this weekend. The car has been giving me good confidence to brake late there, and I just went for it, and it happened.

“Also this mentality of knowing I had a bit less to lose in that battle, and that I could be aggressive and send one. And yeah, I’m glad it happened, because I needed to get back to P1, to then set my pace from there.”

Sainz admitted that at one stage when he was running one-two ahead of Charles Leclerc he thought the pace was too fast and that his team mate was pushing him too hard.

“I felt like it,” he said. “And that’s why at the time in the heat of the battle and the moment, I obviously opened the radio to give my opinion about the situation.

“And I felt like potentially, especially after being one-two, which was a dream scenario, and exactly where we wanted to be after Turn 1, the ideal was to make it to the target lap and obviously keep our tyres alive.

“So I gave that opinion in the heat of the battle, but honestly, I also understand why Charles obviously was there behind and trying to speed me up, because that’s what you do when you’re P2 and when you also want to win.

“Racing situations, heat of the battles, heat of the moment, but nothing that has never happened before. Also from my side, so I completely get it.”

In the end it was a straightforward win for Sainz.

“Once I was in the lead, I was trusting my pace, my management,” he said.” And I knew this weekend I’ve been very quick and I knew I just had to do whatever I had planned and the win was possible.

“Towards the end, McLaren and Lando proved that they are still fast and they’re still very quick and very difficult to beat, but I’m glad that we got fastest lap with Charles, and a lot of points for the championship.”

Piastri has a lot of work to do in the race…

Oscar Piastri will start the Formula 1 Mexico City GP from 17^th GP after what he called “a very silly mistake” late in Q1.

The McLaren driver ran wide at Turn 12 and had his lap deleted, but he actually lost time going off, and ultimately it wouldn’t have got him into Q2 anyway.

He stayed out on track and did another quick lap, but his tyres were past their best. While he did go marginally faster than on the previous run, it was only good enough for 17^th.

“We didn’t have to, but it felt like a very sensible decision to do that,” he said when asked by this writer about the decision to continue on the same tyres.

“I think I just had very, very little grip on that second lap, which was a shame. But I shouldn’t have even needed it.

“Obviously frustrating, because the pace looks very strong, and I felt comfortable. Just tried a bit too much in Turn 12, and it bit me hard. I lost pretty much a second. So it would have been comfortably through.”

After a difficult start on Friday Piastri was adamant that he was in good shape come Saturday.

“FP3 was very strong, even FP2,” he said. “FP1, I struggled a bit. But FP2 I think we made some really good changes, and I was comfortable. FP3, very comfortable as well.

“And even in qualifying, it felt good, just a very silly mistake, trying a bit too hard in Q1. So that was it. At least I know where it all went wrong, but it still is painful stood here.”

Last year Lando Norris started 19^th and finished fifth, showing that it is possible to come through the field at this track.

“Try and get back into the points and strongly into the points, hopefully,” he said when asked about his target for Sunday.

“We’re trying to draw inspiration from Lando’s race last year and see what we can do. I think it’s going to be tough, because the field looks reasonably tight, I would say. But, yeah, I think we’ve got some pace on board this weekend to try and use it to get through.”

Piastri is a step behind Norris on spec, having stuck with the old wing in Austin and then the old floor in Mexico when his team mate upgraded both times.

The Australian didn’t want to use the wing difference as an excuse last week, and again he downplayed the impact of the floor.

Asked if it had generated performance he said: “A little bit yes. Obviously you hope your newer parts are quicker than your old ones!

“As far as I’m aware, they’re doing what they’re supposed to do, but it’s certainly not the same kind of upgrades that we’ve seen in the past, even for the floor.

“So yes, it’s a small time loss, but it doesn’t really matter when you make mistakes like that.”

Leclerc admits that he has to improve on low-grip tracks

Charles Leclerc says that qualifying on low-grip Formula 1 venues like Mexico City and Monza is “not one of my strengths” after he had to settle for fourth on the grid for Sunday’s race.

The Ferrari driver was P4 in all three qualifying sessions, while his team mate Carlos Sainz secured pole position. A mistake in Q3 spoiled any chance of improving his position.

Leclerc says he has issues over one lap at Monza, where cars are in low drag spec, and Mexico, where the high altitude saps downforce.

“Disappointed, but not surprised,” he said of P4. “I was struggling and not feeling well since FP2 with the car.

“In Q3 the lap was coming very, very nicely until Turn 10, where I lost the car. But I had to take those risks, just because I didn’t have the pace. I think P4 is not that bad. But of course, disappointed.”

Asked what he was missing he said: “Just grip, and the feeling. Sometimes you like the balance, today I don’t. Yesterday, I didn’t either.

“I think it’s probably not one of my strengths, the qualifying in very low grip tracks. I tend to push quite a lot in qualifying, and in Monza and here, I always struggle quite a lot with that.”

Leclerc suggested that he has to rein himself in at such venues, and not push too hard.

“I’ve got to think a lot more in order to finish a lap,” he said. “And try to contain a bit more my will to push extremely hard in those qualifyings, because it just doesn’t work out on those tracks.

“And, yeah, today I tried to do that. It was working pretty fine. In Q3 however, I lost the car in Turn 10, and from that moment onwards, it was very difficult to finish a lap.”

“You slide a lot, just because there’s very, very low grip. You’ve just got to be a little bit less on the limit on those tracks, and I struggle a bit more to do that.

“However, for the race pace, it doesn’t seem to be an issue. It wasn’t an issue in Monza. I don’t think it would b e an issue tomorrow. So on that, I’m a lot less worried, but in quali, it’s a bit tricky.”

Leclerc won the US GP from fourth on the grid, but while he is optimistic about Sunday’s race, he acknowledges that it won’t be as straightforward as last weekend.

“McLaren has gained a lot of pace compared to yesterday,” he said. “Max [Verstappen] obviously didn’t run a lot yesterday, so it’s difficult to compare with Max. Actually, we don’t know about Max’s race pace.

“We are quite confident that our car could have a good pace tomorrow. However, I think it’s a different scenario compared to Austin, where there it’s very easy to overtake.

“Here in Mexico, there’s a lot of overheating for the engines, for everything, and whenever you are P4, then you’ve got to manage all these things, and it makes it a lot more difficult to come back.

“But we’ll try our best, and if we do a good start like last week, then everything is possible.”

Clear joined the Ferrari party in Austin

Ferrari senior performance engineer Jock Clear says that the Italian team’s focus on race pace has paid off that it is a “a really good place to be.”

In Austin Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc qualified third and fourth, but they had superior race pace relative to McLaren and Red Bull and logged a one-two, with Leclerc ahead.

Clear said that the switch away from chasing one-lap performance has been successful.

“We’ve mentioned before that this year we had changed our focus a little bit,” said Clear. “It was clear for people to see that certainly two or three years ago, we were the kings of qualifying, and really struggled on a Sunday.

“But even last year the balance was not quite right. And I think this year, the encouraging thing is that wherever the drivers qualify, they sort of get out of get out of the car at the end of qualifying and think, yeah I know that I can race tomorrow, which for the drivers, is a really strong mentality.

“In previous years, you know that Charles has got out of the car in P1 in qualifying, and thought, ‘Now I’ve got to try and hang on to this in the race.’ And when he’s got to face 56 laps of hanging on to a position, it’s a different prospect.

“Now, we go into the race knowing, okay, we qualify P2, P3, we know we can race. We know we can win this from here. And that’s a really, really good place to be so. Psychologically and technically, it’s the right way to approach racing, for sure.”

Clear stressed that the drivers themselves have played a role in ensuring that they look after their tyres on Sundays.

“I think we’ve seen all year, and obviously we statistically look at the season as a whole, and our tyre usage and degradation is much better this year than it was last year,” he said.

“And that’s been pretty much everywhere. And again you can’t forget that a lot of the specifics of getting the tyre to do exactly what you want are down to the driver.

“And Carlos and Charles are now very good at it, and we’ve worked with them, and they’ve worked themselves very well over the last 18 months to really get on top of what was probably very much a perceived weakness two years ago, and that knowledge they have now. So they’re going to apply that everywhere.

“And I think that’s as much a factor of the tyre deg as the car itself. So they’re doing a good job, basically.”

Ferrari lost to rivals in qualifying in Austin thanks to the sequence of fast corners at the start of the lap. However Clear had downplayed the perceived weakness in that area.

“Well, the fast corners aren’t a problem, per se,” he said. “Every circuit is a compromise. We could go much faster around the fast corners if we wanted to, but we would then be compromising the slow speed.

“We made comments in Austin about we’re still losing a bit to the other cars in the high-speed, but we’re gaining huge amounts in the low-speed. And I think the compromise we took in Austin speaks for itself, if you see what I mean.”

Clear suggested that the race team is doing a good job of optimising the car: “I think that’s the encouraging thing about the way an F1 team works away, particularly at the trackside, and applies the performance that the factories delivered for you.

“You’ve got to make those choices. Where do we want to be fast? What are the most important aspects of this circuit? And we got it absolutely right in Austin, there’s some times we don’t get it absolutely right.

“But I don’t think it’s fair to say this car is weak in high-speed. I think if we had a circuit that had seven high speed corners and no low-speed corners, we would set it up, and I think we’d still be in the hunt.

“You’d have to say that Red Bull are probably still the benchmark in high-speed corners, but they’re clearly losing out quite a lot now in the low-speed. So as a compromise and as a complete package, I think we’re comfortable where we are at the moment.”

Clear made an interesting observation on how knowledge gained at the Austrian GP paid off in Austin.

“I think we got it wrong in Austria, which is a very similar circuit to Austin, funnily enough,” he said. “Not absolutely true, but there’s aspects of Austin that worked for us that were a result of what we didn’t get working in Austria.

“Obviously, we brought upgrades in Singapore, we brought upgrades in Italy that were generic. And I think Austin was a proof of that package. But more than that, what we did correctly in Austin was corrected the errors we made in Austria in terms of setup.”

The McLaren Formula 1 team says it disagrees with the decision of the US GP stewards to reject its request for a right of review into the five-second penalty handed to Lando Norris in Austin.

The request was a last roll of the dice by the Woking team to try to reverse the decision that saw Norris cede third place to Verstappen, creating a six-point swing in the World Championship battle.

The stewards determined that the request did not meet the established right of review test of supplying evidence that was significant, relevant, new and unavailable to McLaren at the time of the decision, as noted in Article 14 of the International Sporting Code.

A virtual hearing was held on Friday afternoon Mexican time, with team boss Andrea Stella and racing director Randeep Singh appearing for McLaren, and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley and senior race strategy engineer Stephen Knowles representing Red Bull.

In essence McLaren’s case hinged on the claim that Norris was ahead and that in fact it was Verstappen doing the overtaking, contrary to what was noted in the original decision made by the US GP stewards.

As explained by the FIA, Singh suggested in the hearing that the new evidence was that “the document for the decision contained a statement that was incorrect and that evidenced an objective, measurable and provable error had been made by the stewards”.

The FIA said that Singh added that “the statement was that ‘Car 4 was overtaking Car 1 on the outside but was not level with Car 1 at the apex’ […] was in error because McLaren had evidence that Car 4 had already overtaken and was ahead of Car 1 ‘at the braking zone’,” and that “this error is significant and relevant and is new and was unavailable to McLaren at the time of the decision.”

The FIA noted that Stella said that the case for McLaren was a “legally sophisticated explanation” and “urged the stewards to recognise that this was a ‘substantive case’ especially compared to previous right of review cases.”

In rejecting the request the stewards say they focussed on relevance, concluding that the claim that there was an error in their original decision could not be new evidence.

They noted that “in relation to relevance, McLaren appears to submit that the stewards’ finding that ‘Car 4 was not level with Car 1 at the apex’ was an error and that Car 4 had overtaken Car 1 before the apex (and therefore that Car 1 was the overtaking car) and that this asserted error is itself, a new element.

“This is unsustainable. A petition for review is made in order to correct an error (of fact or law) in a decision. Any new element must demonstrate that error. The error that must be shown to exist, cannot itself be the element referred to.”

In the wake of the decision McLaren issue a statement making its position clear.

The team said: “We disagree with the interpretation that an FIA document, which makes a competitor aware of an objective, measurable and provable error in the decision made by the stewards, cannot be an admissible ‘element’ which meets all four criteria set by the ISC, as specified in Article 14.3.

“We would like to thank the FIA and the stewards for having considered this case in a timely manner. 

“We will continue to work closely with the FIA to further understand how teams can constructively challenge decisions that lead to an incorrect classification of the race.”

Piastri will still have the older wing this weekend

Oscar Piastri will still be without the latest McLaren MCL38 front wing spec in Mexico City this weekend, although the Australian has downplayed any loss of performance relative to his team mate.

The wing was part of a package introduced in Austin, although only Lando Norris raced with it.

More updates are set be introduced in the coming races, with the team trying to ensure that they are fuller proven before they are signed off.

Asked by this writer if he had the new wing this weekend Piastri said: “Not at the moment, I don’t think. But either way, it’s a very, very small performance increase. So if I don’t have it, or if I do, it’s certainly not what’s going to make or break my weekend.

“The only thing I’m missing from last week is the front wing. Again, all of the changes we made were very, very small and minor things. So not having one of them is certainly not the end of the world.”

Team boss Andrea Stella believes that Mexico City will be more favourable to McLaren than Austin, and Piastri agrees.

“Hopefully,” he said. “We’ll see. I mean, it’s quite different in a lot of ways to Austin. Obviously, the kind of altitude and stuff like that makes it quite a different challenge, but hopefully it helps, it suits us a little bit more.

“I don’t think we necessarily expected Austin to be – painful is a bit of an exaggeration – but not as competitive as we hoped. But it wasn’t a complete surprise.”

Piastri says that the team has a better understanding as to why the MCL38 lost form in Austin.

“I think we’ve got some good ideas about why qualifying was so tricky,” he said. “Looking back at the weekend, I think the race itself was actually quite positive, especially from 12 months ago. Especially the first stint, I was going with Lando.

“The second stint a few mistakes in the middle of that hard stint, but for 95% of the race, we were a very even match. And I think even just as a team, our pace was actually quite strong. It was just that we were very slow at the start of the race, and then everyone built the gaps, and then that was kind of it for us.

“So I think it looked a little bit worse than it was. It’s just that, with the competition being so tight, if you put a step wrong, then you go from being first and second to where we were in fourth and fifth. So yeah, it’s just a very tight field.”