McLaren ran its cars with a ride-height safety margin in Las Vegas, where Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri were disqualified for excessive plank wear. But, asks Mark Hughes, was that based on a more aggressive set-up to tackle Red Bull's renewed threat?
Lando Norris has been talking in Qatar about the events of Vegas and his disqualification there for the plank wear infringement. His comments and those of McLaren team principal Andrea Stella are quite illuminating on the subject. They are each saying that their excessive plank wear was actually partly the result of being too conservative with ride height, rather than too ambitious.
Given that these ground effect cars deliver their greatest downforce at the lowest ride height, it all sounds counterintuitive and there are several cynical reactions to that claim from other teams. But let’s hear McLaren out. They are not trying to claim the disqualifications were not deserved, but are simply trying to explain how it happened.
“Based on the data we had acquired in practice, we do not believe we took excessive risks in terms of ride height,” said Stella. “We also added a safety margin for qualifying and the race, compared to practice, in terms of clearance to the ground.
“However, the safety margin was negated by the unexpected onset of the large vertical oscillations, which caused the car to touch the ground.”
It’s an acknowledged phenomenon among all the teams – and not only in F1, but in other categories too – that sometimes, with certain track characteristics, having the ride height too high can actually increase plank wear. It’s all about the frequencies initiated by any bumps; they can be greater at higher ride heights. There’s a certain frequency which initiates the vertical bouncing and the related porpoising. It’s been largely controlled by the teams over the last couple of years but is still there lying in wait for any miscalculation.
Porpoising was a big factor in McLaren’s DSQ
McLaren
Similarly, trying to limit the wear by more lift and coasting can actually exacerbate the problem. “The porpoising condition that the car developed in the race was also a difficult one to mitigate,” continued Stella, “as even a reduction in speed – an action that, in theory, should increase clearance to the ground – was only effective in some parts of the track but in others was actually counterproductive.”
“It’s not as simple as [me] lifting off more and it just being better,” says Norris. “Especially because the issue was porpoising. It wasn’t because we were just running low. Sometimes it can be the opposite. Sometimes if you lift more you get more porpoising and it actually becomes a worse effect… In some ways you can say we didn’t take enough risk… in fact we were slower because of the issues we had, not quicker.”
All that said, the car was running visibly low if we observe how much sparking there was – and there are other teams still trying to understand how the car has been able to do that for much of the season without any plank wear issues.
If we look at the pattern of performances between the McLaren and Red Bull over the different corners of the season, it would appear that the RB21’s best comparison to the MCL39 is through fast corners. When the circuit layout demands more of a spread of corner speeds, the McLaren advantage has increased. The inference of this combination is that the Red Bull’s centre of aerodynamic pressure – its aero ‘weight distribution’, if you like – is further rearwards.
The McLaren can bring that centre of pressure further forwards as it slows – and that brings flexibility, allowing it to achieve a good handling balance over a wider range of corner speeds because you want it forwards at low speeds to counter the natural understeer and rearwards at high speeds to help calm the natural rear instability.
Red Bull’s updates have helped mitigate its early-season problems
McLaren
But Red Bull has been developing that big front wing introduced at Zandvoort extensively – and in Vegas it was further modified. That for sure will have helped move that stubborn centre of pressure forwards – the very thing it has struggled to do for much of the season.
McLaren’s disqualification from the Las Vegas Grand Prix led to speculation about a conspiracy to bring Max Verstappen back into the title fight. But there’s a more realistic explanation
By
Mark Hughes
The McLaren needs to run the rear lower to match the Red Bull through fast corners, but at many tracks it hasn’t needed to — because over the lap, the combination of corner speeds kept it ahead. But with a more potent front end the Red Bull has become a formidable weapon, still with that great high-speed downforce, but now with a more flexible speed range.
As a result, perhaps McLaren has been pushed into a yet-lower rear ride height zone where the plank wear has become more marginal and maybe when Norris and Stella say the ride height for qualifying/race at Vegas was not aggressive enough, they are talking of having gone lower than ever in practice — responding to Red Bull’s increased pace — then come up a little from that in an attempt at being safe, but still lower than anyone else. And with the lack of relevant running around the bumpy track, that has taken them into that tricky zone where the increase in ride height has had the opposite effect on plank wear to that expected.
So that’s how the battlefield looks as we head into the very fast corner Qatar weekend. Does what happened in Vegas stay in Vegas – or does what happened in Vegas actually portend? I dunno. Let’s watch and find out.
