Mark Hughes: Detuned to win - How McLaren tamed its own car at Zandvoort

The final Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort (yes, they said that in ’85 too, but… ) was a fascinating contest and a continuation of the dramatic return to form of Lando Norris and McLaren we saw in Budapest. But it was far from easy this time. He had to catch and pass Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes to do it. He had one opportunity to make the move as they both caught the old-tyred Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton approaching Tarzan – and he took it, surging around the outside seven laps after his second stop.

On his middle stint of this two-stop race, he’d stayed out seven laps longer than Antonelli to get a favourable tyre offset in the final stint. Even though that had dropped him from the Merc’s gearbox to 3sec behind, the newer rubber and the fact that Antonelli’s car really did not like the hard compound tyre was enough to allow Norris to advance dramatically back onto his adversary’s tail and thereby be in place to make the critical race-winning move.

It was a beautiful drive by Norris and the McLaren was working significantly better than the day before in the sprint when he’d been well beaten by George Russell’s dominant Mercedes and Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari. All three of those cars looked the fastest at various phases of the cool, overcast, occasionally rainy weekend. But the performance patterns through the varying demands of each of the three sectors were unmistakeable: the Mercedes was much the fastest in the straights of sector 1, the McLaren faster by an outrageous amount through the long high-speed turns of the middle sector, the Mercedes edging the Ferrari out through sector 3. The Ferrari was a sort of halfway-house between the two but with very good tyre deg on a track which imposed a lot of strain on the rears.

All three were vastly better than Red Bull, whose fortunes were dealt a further blow when newly re-signed Max Verstappen broke the collective heart of the crowd by crashing heavily at the end of the first lap, bringing out the red flags. Still, the event his success had created signed off from F1 beautifully with a fascinating roller-coaster ride of changing fortunes and moments of drama. None of it polluted by any concerns with battery deployment, such is the track’s layout.

The McLaren – updated further here in addition to its Budapest upgrade – was too good through the fast corners in the sprint. So fast that it over-worked the rear tyres and after a few laps made it yet slower than it already was through the slow turns. Even though Leclerc had started on the soft for the sprint, he was able to overtake the medium-shod Norris late in the race.

A lot of work by McLaren and a lot of analysis by Norris and his team on how best to drive the car to exploit its good qualities and contain its worst bits transformed things for the grand prix. He set pole by a narrow margin but only because both Mercedes drivers made crucial errors on laps that were potentially better – and maybe because Ferrari had mistimed its final Q3 runs.

“The car works well at tracks requiring a high level of downforce and on new rubber and low fuel,” said Andrea Stella after qualifying. “But we saw in the sprint we needed to improve rear tyre degradation. We applied some changes which improved the car and low speed and changed the demand on the rear axle and it looks like they worked for qualifying at least. But it will need a change in the driving style and even how we use the car’s pace so as not to use the tyres too early.”

“Yeah, we just tried to hint the car into a direction,” said Norris. “The losses are still in the same place. [Mercedes] are still way better than us in the slow-speed but we’ve improved it and we’re still by far the fastest through the fast Turns 7 and 8.”

They’d simply detuned its balance a little, tried to give it a little more low-speed front end at the expense of some of the excess speed they couldn’t use in the fast stuff because of tyre deg. Norris, in turn, is super-sensitive to what this car is asking of him in a way that team-mate Oscar Piastri just isn’t at the moment. The gap was only 0.15sec in qualifying (putting him P4 on the grid) but would balloon in race stints and he’d finish sixth, half a minute behind his winning team-mate.

Read between the lines – of the data traces and of what they are saying – and the patterns are recognisable. Eventually, it was teased out of Norris after the race. “Tyres were our weakness yesterday and our strength today,” he reported. “It came alive on the hard tyres, but the first stint [on mediums] reminded me of yesterday. It’s still horrible to drive, trickier than last year’s car. I don’t have the car I need to fight for a title, knowing all the tracks that are coming up that we’re going to struggle more on – and I don’t want to struggle more. If we can improve the low-speed, I could win every race.”

This is to do with the concept of the car. The MCL40 is short in wheelbase and in gearing. Budapest and Zandvoort were perfect for the gearing, without much straight to penalise its lower top speed and lots of corner sequences which reward having the engine’s punch in just the right place. But that lower gearing also tends to hurt traction, spinning the wheels up more easily, so in concept and development direction its aero balance is further rearwards than on longer cars such as the Mercedes and Ferrari. Which gives it lovely high-speed stability but a slightly awkward front end at lower speeds.

On circuits like Zandvoort, with layouts imposing high tyre deg, McLaren is having to rebalance the car so its great high-speed cornering doesn’t overwhelm the tyre’s core. Yes, the development parts introduced to the car in Hungary and here have made it better everywhere, but it retains the same corner speed performance profile. Just at higher speeds than before. Which is why Norris, as a realist, is not convinced that his 83-point deficit to Antonelli is recoverable, as he believes the Mercedes is a more rounded performer.

Mercedes, meanwhile, is worried that the aggressive recent upgrades have made the McLaren a faster car everywhere – and that they (Mercedes) have only one upgrade up their sleeve (at Baku) before they are nudging the cost cap. Who is right?

Antonelli meanwhile jumped Russell at the first start to go second before Verstappen brought out the red flags at the end of the lap. Kimi then did the same to Norris at the second start to take the lead. Both cars were on mediums at this point, with the Ferraris on softs and Piastri on hards. Russell (also on mediums) briefly lost a chunk of power and was passed by Piastri on the opening lap but had no great pace on that tyre anyway. He got past Oscar only because of a delay at McLaren’s first pitstop. Both Ferraris subsequently – Leclerc ahead – got by Piastri and pulled away too.

“The car felt good on the medium,” reported Antonelli of his first stint, when he pulled out 2sec on Norris, “but as soon as we switched to the hard I lost so much pace.”

“We were mediocre on the medium,” said Norris. “But the car came alive on the hard.”

So as they pitted on the same lap and left in the same order, Norris was pushing and probing. Even when he lost out in traffic, he’d be right back upon the Merc next lap, high-speed snaps caught like they were nothing. He was clearly faster. “As I got closer, Kimi started making mistakes,” said Norris. So with Lando within boost range, Mercedes brought Antonelli in for his second stop at the earliest possible moment (lap 40).